By Kerry Kuluski
Do patients, their family physicians and informal caregivers agree on care goals? In short, rarely. We conducted interviews with 28 older persons with multi-morbidities, their informal caregivers and family physicians to assess and compare patient care goals. Maintaining functional independence was a common goal across all groups when looking at the data at the aggregate level. When comparing findings across patient-caregiver-family physician triads a different picture emerged. Very little alignment was found, particularly when patients were medically unstable and during transition points (e.g., when the patient required care in an alternate setting). While divergence in care goals may reflect the different roles and responsibilities of each of the players involved, these perspectives should be illuminated when building care plans to ensure that trade-offs are explored, the needs of the patient are supported and that quality of care is enhanced. This highly accessed paper was recently published in BMC Family Practice.