Summary:

The 3 Wishes Project

This project focuses on patients receiving advanced life support who are dying in the intensive care unit (ICU). End of life care in this setting can be impersonal for everyone – for patients, for families and for clinicians. By asking about and carrying out at least 3 final wishes for dying patients, the 3 Wishes Project was designed to celebrate lives and support those left behind in grief. Originally designed in one ICU in Hamilton, Ontario, our goal is to expand this project to include an ICU in Toronto, Ontario. We hope to improve the dying experience for ICU patients, their families, and their clinicians, by encouraging specific wishes unique to each dying person in the project. In the Hamilton ICU, we will enlist the help of clinical staff to implement the wishes in the 3 Wishes Project.  Through interviews and focus groups, we will understand if this approach is able to recognize the person, journey, story and preferences of each dying patient and their family member. Designed to bring peace to the final days of a critically ill patient’s life and to ease the grieving process for others, this low technology, low risk, low cost project could help to improve end of life care for critically ill Canadians.