Information Seeking and End-of-Life Decision Making: future directions for medical librarian involvement

Abstract

Introduction: Terminally ill patients and their caregivers face complicated choices about palliative services and end-of-life (EOL) care, including decisions related to completing a DNR order or advance directive, selecting a health care proxy, and utilizing hospice services1. Caregivers report a desire for more information at all stages of the terminal illness process, and although the amount and specificity of information they want can vary, they nonetheless want the information provided to be consistent. Self-directed attempts to procure and synthesize information into the decision-making process are increasingly important and relevant to targeted, future librarian outreach efforts. The purpose of this study was to examine two data sets for information about 1) kinds of decisions people are making about end-of-life related issues and 2) trends in information usage about these same issues from a vetted, authoritative online source.