Asian family members’ participation in advance care planning: An integrative review

This episode features Jing-Da Pan (Department of Oncology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China School of Nursing, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China)

 

What is already known about the topic?

• Family members are crucial in advance care planning for patients with life-limiting illnesses, particularly in Asia, where cultural values stress family-centeredness and paternalism.
• No study so far has attempted to systematically synthesize this information within the Asian context and there is a lack of a model to describe Asian family members’ involvement in advance care planning.

 

What this paper adds?

• Asian family members are willing to participate in advance care planning but face difficulties in translating this willingness into action.
• Barriers include inadequate legislation, insufficient public education, and influences from Confucianism or traditional beliefs.
• A culturally sensitive model with six dimensions was developed to illustrate Asian family members’ participation in advance care planning.

 

Implications for practice, theory, or policy

• Asian governments should enact advance care planning legislation to ascertain its legal status and allocate more relevant resources to educate the public to overcome the barriers to Asian family members’ participation in advance care planning.
• Future efforts in advance care planning in Asia should prioritize developing culturally sensitive models which align the willingness, beliefs, and actions of Asians and the proposed conceptual model should be verified by more advanced statistical tests, thus confirming its validity in different Asian regions.
• Due to the paradoxical impact of filial piety on advance care planning, a culturally specific intervention is needed to help family members understand that respecting dying patients’ decisions is a filial act, ultimately improving their involvement in advance care planning.

 

Full paper available from:    

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02692163251317856

 

If you would like to record a podcast about your published (or accepted) Palliative Medicine paper, please contact Dr Amara Nwosu: 

a.nwosu@lancaster.ac.uk