Advance directives in palliative care-a new tool to improve the communication between patients and caregivers?

In palliative care, caregivers frequently act as surrogate decision-makers, but their knowledge of patients' preferences for end-of-life care is sometimes scarce and incorrect. Advance Directives might be a powerful communication tool to promote the dialogue between patients and caregivers.

This work aims to find evidence supporting the use of the Advance Directives documents by health practitioners as a communication tool to improve caregivers' capacity as health surrogates in palliative care.

A literature review was conducted in four databases-Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, and Cochrane to identify studies published until February 27th, 2021, analysing advance directive's use as a communication tool between palliative patients and their caregivers.

Of the 1251 papers screened, only one article met the defined criteria, presenting results statistically favourable to advance directive's use, although with the risk of significant bias.

Although the results seem promising, more studies are needed to validate this strategy scientifically.