Advance care planning: a systematic mapping review

Posted on 10 January 2020

The York HS&DR Evidence Synthesis Centre at CRD has recently been commissioned to identify the existing research evidence that looks at how well advance care planning works, and what the barriers and facilitators to implementing it are.

Advance care planning is a voluntary process of discussion about future care between an individual and their care providers. It might include an individual’s concerns and wishes, their important values or personal goals for care, their understanding about their illness and prognosis, preferences and wishes for types of care or treatment in the future and the availability of such treatment. Current national guidance documents state that advance care planning should be offered to anyone who is at risk of losing capacity (eg a life-limiting illness) as well as those who have fluctuating capacity (e.g. mental illness). For people living with dementia and their carers, there should be early and ongoing opportunities to discuss the benefits and processes of advance care planning and giving individuals the opportunity to review and change any decisions made.

We know from our initial searches that many reviews of the research evidence have been published quite recently. We aim to fully map this existing evidence, to highlight the key issues and identify gaps in the evidence which future research should address.

Protocol advance care planning (PDF , 353kb)