Trial reportThe American journal of hospice & palliative care2022
What Surrogates Understand (and Don't Understand) About Patients' Wishes After Engaging Advance Care Planning: A Qualitative Analysis.
Trial report in The American journal of hospice & palliative care, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Reconstruction of patients' treatment preferences in disorders of consciousness: a systematic review.BMC medical ethics · 2025Pooled it
- The Value of Advance Care Planning for Spokespersons of Patients With Advanced Illness.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2023Trial
- Asking Older Adults With Impaired Cognition and Care Partners About Serious Illness Experiences Can Elicit Goals of Care During Advance Care Planning.The American journal of hospice & palliative care · 2026Article
- Preparing Surrogates for Decision-Making: Development and Pilot Testing of Prepare for Their Care.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2025Article
- Families' Experiences of Surrogate Decision-Making and Challenges of Shared Decision-Making: A Cross-Sectional Study.Cureus · 2025Article
- Measuring decision aid effectiveness for end-of-life care: A systematic review.PEC innovation · 2024Article
- What Counts as a Surrogate Decision?The American journal of hospice & palliative care · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe goal of advance care planning (ACP) is to improve end-of-life decision-making for patients and their spokespersons, but multiple studies have failed to show substantial or consistent benefit from ACP. Understanding how and why ACP under-performs in the setting of complex medical decision-making is key to optimizing current, or designing new, ACP interventions.
aimTo explore how ACP did or did not contribute to a spokespersons' understanding of patient wishes after engaging in ACP.
designThematic analysis of 200 purposively sampled interviews from a randomized control trial of an ACP decision aid. SETTING/
participants200 dyads consisting of patients 18 years or older with advanced serious illness and their spokesperson at 2 tertiary care centers in Hershey, PA and Boston, MA. Participants were interviewed 1 month after completing ACP.
resultsACP helped participants: 1) express clear end-of-life wishes, 2) clarify values, and 3) recognize challenges associated with applying those wishes in complex situations. Shortcomings of ACP included 1) unknown prognostic information or quality-of-life outcomes to inform decision-making, 2) skepticism about patients' wishes, and 3) complicated emotions impacting end-of-life discussions.
conclusionsHelping patients and their spokespersons better anticipate decision-making in the face of prognostic and informational uncertainty as well as the emotional complexities of making medical decisions may improve the efficacy of ACP interventions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.