Psychology & health
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Psychology & health · Aug 2019
Patient-provider care goal concordance: implications for palliative care decisions.
Objective: Goal-concordant care is an important feature of high quality medical treatment. Patients' care goals may focus on curative and/or palliative outcomes. Patients rarely communicate their care goals, and providers' predictions of patient goals are often inaccurate, corresponding most closely to their own treatment goals. ⋯ Providers were more likely to prioritise palliative care (relative to curative) in their own goals than in their predictions about patients' goals. Providers were more willing to deliver palliative care when their own goals prioritised more palliative relative to curative care, but their perceptions of patient goals were unassociated with willingness to provide it. Conclusions: Efforts to improve goal communication and reduce projection biases among providers may facilitate goal-concordant care.