BEHS 380- Project

Based on your Research Proposal, this project will represent the culmination of your study of the End of Life Issues in this course, and will enable you to explore a specific topic of interest from the perspective of one of the social or behavioral sciences. Your paper should include the various sources that you collected in your proposal. All sources should convey information that is integrated into your paper:

1. A source regarding your discipline of choice2. At least one resource from our course3. At least two scholarly sources4. At least one organizational source5. (optional) Any additional sources that you would like to include that are relevant to your topic.

Please be sure to see the feedback on your proposal to help you successfully complete this project, and feel free to contact me with any questions as you are working on it.

Your paper should be a coherent essay that develops an argument related to your topic of research. It should NOT be a list of concepts and sources related to the topic.

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Research Proposal: Exploring End-of-Life Decision-Making in Gerontology
Maureen Everett
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End-of-life decision-making is a critical area in the healthcare field that is pivotal to the
discipline of gerontology, which enlists geriatric studies in its efforts to encompass these issues
broadly. In this study, it becomes clear that the complicated dynamics of people and families are
central to identifying the factors that make people more or less likely to succeed after termination
of the assistance. The elements shaping decision-making introduce advanced care planning and
palliative care, and the functions of healthcare proxies will be investigated. The study stemming
from the work of Petrillo et al. (2018) provides for the comprehension of the inherent multidimensionality of making informed decisions during the final journey.
As for the choice of direction, gerontology is a comprehensive insight into aging as a
whole and its web of complex consequences. It has a foundation in psychology, sociology, and
biology, from which it incorporates these domains to probe holistically into the physical, mental,
and emotional aspects of aging. The interdisciplinary model is an indispensable part of managing
situations at that complexity level –it brings both emotional and cognition concerns and social
ones (Quadagno, 2014). Gerontology bridges different disciplines to gain a multifaceted
perspective on aging’s complexities and dynamics to employ it as the base for holistically and
insightfully examining the critical factors and dynamics of end–of–life decision-making.
This project searches and finds the complex relationships between culture and family dynamics,
which strongly influence end-of-life decisions among older people. Moreover, the research aim
is to investigate whether the communication strategies used by healthcare providers, their
patients, and families are effective. The task of the research, through the observation of such
phenomena, is to find out how well-informed choice-making can be promoted and how this
reflects positively on further improvements in the quality of end-of-life care services.
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Crucial to this project is the course text, “Aging Matters: Social gerontology” (Quadagno,
2014). This basic source broadens the knowledge of gerontology by defining the social aspects
and all the challenges older adults face. This text is used as a navigational aid to integrate social
gerontology by providing information on social justice for older adults and additional ways of
looking at growing old. After reading Quadagno’s (2014) work, one can make a comprehensive
and thoughtful analysis of advance directives for life-ending, advocating them and considering
them as a part of more high-scale events such as social and gerontological dynamics.
The NHPCO (National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization) is one of the central
organizations in this study. The organization is famous for its principle of supporting quality endof-life care and, in return, provides patients, families, and healthcare professionals with one-of-akind resources carefully curated by experts in their field. It impacts attitudes and modifies the
dialogue about the Stages of Life Care. It also offers a lot of assistance and advice in any
situation and teaches many things through the organization of comprehensive initiatives. Adding
NHPCO’s ideas and resources to the research gives a full-fledged framework that eventually
results in achieving the respective organization’s mission, i.e., improving end-of-life care based
on compassion and quality.
Two scholarly sources
The main contribution of Amaral et al. (2022) to the topic investigated is the thorough
examination of decision-making capacity in older adults, especially those whose cognitive skills
are declining. The study provides different perceptions, legal matters, and evaluation methods
based on nine focus groups involving professionals in the healthcare field, lawyers, nursing
home staff, and older citizens. The article in the study outlines the treatment decision-making
experiences of specialist burn clinicians facing potentially non-life-saving burn injuries (Reeder
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et al.). The management of EoL decision-making is a complicated event governed by many
factors, and the dynamic of the situation on the first-hand experience of eleven clinicians is the
research’s core qualitative discovery. Moreover, the article suggests that the participation of
palliative teams in EoL discussions should be improved and that the study of gerontology end-oflife issues requires further exploration. The authors of these articles tackle the fine intricacies of
terminally ill decisions place and the factors shaping the choices of those in later life.
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References
Amaral, A. S., Simões, M. R., Freitas, S., Vilar, M., Sousa, L. B., & Afonso, R. M. (2022).
Healthcare decision-making capacity in old age: A qualitative study. Frontiers in
Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1024967
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. (2019). Home – NHPCO. NHPCO.

Home

Petrillo, L. A., McMahan, R. D., Tang, V., Dohan, D., & Sudore, R. L. (2018). Older Adult and
Surrogate Perspectives on Serious, Difficult, and Important Medical Decisions. Journal
of the American Geriatrics Society, 66(8), 1515–1523. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.15426
Quadagno, J. S. (2014). Aging and the life course : an introduction to social gerontology.
Mcgraw-Hill, Cop.
Reeder, S., Cleland, H. J., Gold, M., & Tracy, L. M. (2022). Exploring clinicians’ decisionmaking processes about end-of-life care after burns: A qualitative interview study. Burns.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2022.12.001