Community workshops increase advance care planning knowledge, appointment of legal proxies and completion of end-of life written plans

Abstract

Advance Care Planning involves having conversations, completing documents detailing individuals’ end-of life treatment and care preferences, and appointing legal proxies who make health, lifestyle, or financial decisions. Although beneficial outcomes have been demonstrated, community rates of Advance Care Planning remain low. We developed a theoretically based workshop to increase knowledge and change behaviors in relation to Advance Care Planning; 347 participants completed the workshop. Advance Care Planning knowledge and action significantly improved three months post workshop. The intervention increased Advance Care Planning knowledge and changed behaviors.

Acknowledgements

We thank our workshop presenters for developing and facilitating the workshops, recruiting workshop participants, and assisting with data collection. We also greatly thank the study participants for volunteering their time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data and analyses codes may be made available on request if the request aligns with ethics approvals.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Palliative Care Western Australia, the Cancer and Palliative Care Network, Western Australian Department of Health and Lotterywest who funded the project. These organizations had no role in the design, implementation, interpretation or reporting of the study.