End-of-life communication needs for adolescents and young adults with cancer: Recommendations for research and practice

Adolescents and young adults (AYAs) aged 15-39 with cancer face developmental, psychological, and medical-related challenges. When cancer treatment is not successful and cure becomes unlikely, they can be especially at risk. There is little guidance to define and support best-practice communication with AYAs towards end-of-life.

We conducted a narrative review to address this research gap. Overall, we found that evidence points to the importance of introducing palliative care teams earlier. Additionally, it is important to explore AYAs’ preferences around end-of-life issues in a repeated, consistent manner; this offers multiple ‘openings’ to these difficult conversations, and also allows for the fact that AYAs’ preferences can and do change over time as their medical and support needs change. Our review also highlighted that AYAs may have strong preferences on a range of issues such as being able to stay in their own home, being comfortable and free from pain, and expressing their wishes to loved ones.
We highlighted a number of best-practice recommendations to guide clinicians around the critical elements of when, who, what, and how end-of-life conversations may be best had with AYAs. These included:

1. When: Introduce palliative care team members earlier during treatment to facilitate opening conversations to end-of-life concepts prior to disease/symptom-related ‘crises’ or the end of active (curative) treatment.

By introducing palliative care teams earlier, AYAs and their families have time to develop relationships with these new health-professionals prior to formal changes in care.

1. Who: Ensure the wider multidisciplinary team is confident and adequately skilled to support end-of-life conversations with AYAs.

Given that AYAs can develop relationships with various different team members involved in their care, it is important that all team members – whether it is the doctor, social worker, radiation therapist, or ward nurse – feel comfortable to talk to AYAs in age-appropriate ways if and when the young person is ready to talk about end-of-life issues. Taking this team approach is also consistent with a developmentally-appropriate AYA model of care.

1. What: Tailor the content of end-of-life conversations to the individual patient, and the unique context of the particular time point the conversation is being introduced.

There are many important topics to broad with AYAs who may die from their disease, such as preferences for pain/symptom control, ongoing active/palliative treatment, and potential place of dying/death. These topics can include thoughts and preferences about which family and friends a young person would like to have visit/close, and when (e.g., do they want visitors when they are sad or feeling unwell?); or what activities they really value and make them happy in their day-to-day lives (are there ways we can continue to make these possible as their disease progresses?). Opening conversations focused more on the identity of the AYA patients sitting in front of you (who are you, and what’s important to you?) can be a useful way to set up some of the more difficult/confronting conversations later on.

1. How: Use structured advance-care planning tools to scaffold conversations, and as a mechanism to facilitate communication between AYA patients, their families, and members of the multidisciplinary care team.

Communication tools such as the American Voicing my ChoicesTM may be useful in supporting discussion around different topics at different times. These tools can also be useful in ‘externalising’ the discussion in some ways – clinicians can refer to the fact that the tool was developed together with other young people, so the patient sitting in front of you may or may not find the topics helpful. Studies are underway, including here in Australia, to tailor this American tool to be culturally- and linguistically-appropriate to different countries.
 
Numerous gaps in the evidence base remain. For example, there is a lack of data to guide practice when disagreement between AYAs’ and their parents’ preferences exists. However, based on our research synthesis, we proposed a new model (below) to support clinicians and researchers to better understand how individual, familial, and socio-cultural factors impact end-of-life communication with AYAs in clinical settings. We hope this model will continue to spark new research questions and support clinical advocacy for AYAs with cancer and their families facing end-of-life.