Critical Appraisal Topic on Patient Education on Advance Directives in End-of-life Care

For the past 20 years, physicians, ethicists and lawyers have advised patients with terminal conditions to document their wishes in advance, using advance directives (ADs). Completion rates for ADs increased when information was given to participants in advance of their admission. However, despite efforts to educate patients about ADs, completion rates of ADs were still low. Reviewing the current evidence on effectiveness of patient education on ADs in increasing ADs completion rates in patient in end-of-life care. Literature search of studies evaluated various ways of patient education on ADs by searching CINAHL, MEDLINE, Scopus and PubMed using key words ‘patient education', ‘health education', ‘advance directives' or ‘living will' or ‘durable power of attorney' or ‘proxy' and ‘increased completion rates and cancer or end-of-life care'. Literature search was limited to articles in English. The different ways of patient education showed different level of effectiveness in increasing ADs completion. Further studies are warranted in examining the many kinds of patient education in different settings to screen for and determine the most effective one