Increasing the uptake of advance care directives through staff education and one-on-one support for people facing end-of-life.

Background: An advance care plan outlines a patient's wishes regarding medical treatment or goals of care in the case that they become unable to communicate or to make decisions. An advance care directive (ACD) is an advance care plan that has been formally recorded and has legal status. Despite ACDs playing an important role in person-centred end-of-life care, an earlier retrospective medical records audit demonstrated that only 11% (58/531) of people who died due to a terminal illness had an ACD.

A cross-sectional study assessing concordance with advance care directives in a rural health district.

Objective: To measure compliance with Advance Care Directives (ACDs) for decedents in a rural setting.

Design: Observational, cross-sectional medical records audit comparing requests in ACDs with actual outcomes.

Setting: Rural Australian coastal district.