• Lara Dhingra, Kin Lam, William Cheung, Gavin Hynes, Colleen Fleming-Damon, Stephanie Hicks, Philip Huang, Jack Chen, Victor Chang, and Russell Portenoy.
• MJHS Institute for Innovation in Palliative Care, New York, New York, USA; Department of Family and Social Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, USA. Electronic address: LDhingra@mjhs.org.
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2021 Sep 1; 62 (3): e186-e191.

BackgroundFirst-generation Chinese American patients have low engagement in advance care planning (ACP). Among the causes may be clinician uncertainty about traditional cultural values.AimBased on a survey identifying barriers to ACP among older ethnic Chinese American patients, we created a toolkit to support clinicians in culturally relevant ACP practices and conducted a pilot test to evaluate usability, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes.Design/Setting/ParticipantsThe toolkit includes culturally relevant information and an ACP guideline with a prompt list of questions. Six clinicians (three physicians, two nurse practitioners, and one physician assistant) in two New York City-based practices piloted the toolkit through discussions with 66 patients.ResultsPatients' age averaged 70.2 years (SD=12.4); 56.1% were women. Almost two-thirds had not finished high school and 53.0% spoke only Cantonese. More than three-quarters (78.8%) did not understand the purpose of ACP before the discussion. During the discussion, 58 patients (87.9%) completed a new proxy naming a health care agent, 21 (31.8%) requested a nonhospital DNR order, and two (3%) completed a living will. Topics discussed included treatment preferences (discussed with 80.3% of patients); health care values (77.3%); treatment decisions (72.7%); goals of care (68.2%), and hospice (1.5%). Five of the six clinicians expressed satisfaction ("very" or "somewhat") with the toolkit, four were "very" comfortable using it, and three stated that it helped them "a lot" with effective discussions.ConclusionsAn ACP toolkit may facilitate culturally relevant ACP discussions by increasing clinician competency and patient engagement. Further studies of this approach are needed.Copyright © 2021 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. All rights reserved.

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