Doctor's Perceptions of the Systemic Influences on Advance Care Plan Application: A Thematic Analysis

Healthcare consumers are encouraged to develop an Advance Care Plan (ACP) to help to ensure their preferences are known and respected. However, the role of governing systems in the application of ACPs must be understood if patients' voices (expressed within this medium) are to be heard.

To explore systemic barriers influencing Queensland public hospital doctors' application of the Advance Care Plans of hospitalized people with a neurodegenerative disorder.

Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, 16 semi structured interviews were conducted with public hospital doctors. Data were inductively analysed using open and focused coding.

Analysis revealed two main themes: Practicing Medicine within a Legal Construct, and Delegitimizing ACP. Participants found the application of ACP in Queensland unduly complex, and they were inadequately prepared by education or training. Doctors maintained a dominant role in temporal medical decision-making and cited hospital practice culture for delegitimizing patient-owned ACPs.

The public healthcare system in Queensland exerts considerable influence over the degree to which ACPs influence decision-making. Despite the premise that ACPs give patients a powerful voice, hospital doctors often do not understand the underpinning law on which they depend when citing their responsibility for good medical practice. Systemic influences have contributed to a practice culture that has delegitimized the patient's voice when expressed through an ACP.