IUPUI nursing professor receives $2.2M grant for study

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – The National Institute of Nursing Research has awarded $2.2 million to an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis nursing professor to evaluate the use in Indiana nursing homes of a new advance-care planning tool created to help ensure that patients’ end-of-life treatment preferences are honored.

The research will provide information about how well the Physician Orders for Scope of Treatment tool reflects patients’ treatment preferences on individual’s detailed preferences in areas including resuscitation, hospitalization and feeding tubes and how well patients understand those orders.

The research team will be led by Susan Hickman, who teaches ethics in the nursing school and is co-director of the IUPUI Research in Palliative and End-of-Life Communication and Training Signature Center. The team will collect data and conduct interviews with nursing-home patients or legal representatives.