Efficacy of Decision Aid for Advanced Care Planning(RCT) for General Population: Randomized Controlled Trial

This study validates effectiveness of decision aid that the investigators developed due to the rates of completing Advanced care planning are considerably low, which is led by the lack of information available to general population; whether they elevate the preference of healthy general population toward Advanced Care planning, reduce the burden of decision making, and support general population to overcome their crisis, compare to educational resources that are currently available.

Previous studies inform that educational video about advanced care planning increases the knowledge of care for life prolongation and affects the preference towards care for life prolongation and palliative care. However, previous studies focused mainly on patient populations, and the general population might differ in its understanding of disease, health care services, and ACP. In this study, we constructed ACP video decision support materials for the general population and compared their effectiveness in an RCT.

Primary outcome of this study is attitude and behavior change toward advanced care planning. Participants of this study will fill out the baseline questionnaire about ACP preference, end-of-life care preference, knowledge of ACP, etc. After that, participants will be allocated equally into the intervention group and the control group. Participants assigned to the intervention arm viewed the 20-minute educational decision support video entitled Advance Care Planning, which had been used and tested in studies with advanced cancer patients. Participants randomized to the attention-control arm received and read a 13-page brochure entitled, Understanding the Life-Sustaining Treatment Act, which was developed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. After reading and watching the educational materials, patients will get another questionnaire about knowledge of ACP, satisfaction on the materials, ACP Preference, etc.