The International Commission on Health Care Certification Life Care Planner Role and Function Investigation

Life care planning role and function studies serve to identify job task inventories and competencies specific to life care planning service delivery. These job tasks/competencies are essential for the development of credentialing examinations specific to life care planning service delivery and serve to provide life care planning training programs a basis on which to manage, adjust, or modify their training units. This article describes a 3-year study of the roles and functions of life care planners who were surveyed which included health care professionals certified as life care planners under the ICHCC and health care professionals not certified as life care planners under the ICHCC practicing in this specialized service delivery health care system. Subject matter experts (SMEs) met on three occasions to identify job tasks/competencies and to develop the survey instrument that identified 197 job tasks and competencies that typify life care planning service delivery. There were five hypotheses generated to ascertain any significant differences among the responding diverse groups of health care professionals regarding 1) the identification of job tasks/competencies that comprise life care planning service delivery 2) any differences in life care planning practice perceptions between Certified Life Care Planners (CLCP) and Certified Nurse Life Care Planners (CNLCP) 3) the perceptions of life care planning service delivery among physician/doctoral level (i.e., M.D., Ph.D., Ed.D., PsyD., Rh.D., DPT)., and nonphysician/ doctoral level practitioners (i.e., A.D., A.B., B.A., B.S., M.S., M.A.) 4) the differences in the amount of time spent on life care planning services among the varying groups of responding practitioners and 5) the differences in life care planning practice perceptions based on the formal academic degree statuses among the groups of responding practitioners. The results of this study have strong implications for life care planning training program development/revision, certification examination content management and validation, and adjustment/expansion of practitioners’ life