Palliative clinical trials

Initiating ACP in General Practice. A Phase II Study

End-of-life care often fails in providing optimal patient-centred care and quality of life. Patients frequently suffer from inadequate control of pain, from a lack of communication about their illness and options for treatment, and from poor psychosocial and spiritual support. Advance care planning (ACP) can tackle these problems by providing patients with an opportunity to formulate their wishes and plan their future care, should they become incapable of participating in medical treatment decisions. Previous studies show that ACP improves concordance between patient's preferences and end-of-life care received and quality of care at the end-of-life. However, ACP is yet to be embedded in routine clinical practice and public consciousness. General practitioners (GPs) are in an ideal position to discuss ACP with their patients. By introducing ACP during a routine office visit, GPs can facilitate a structured discussion of the patient's wishes for end-of-life care. However, no ACP models have been systematically developed and tested in general practice. We developed a complex intervention to improve the initiation of ACP in general practice following the steps of an international guidance for development and evaluation of complex interventions. Before performing a full-scale intervention trial to study the effectiveness of this intervention on quality of care and quality of life, this model needs to be validated and tested in a pilot trial.