An Interactive Exercise in Advance Care Planning for Medical Students

With the growing need to train medical professionals how to engage their patients in advance care planning, this study examines medical students' experience using an interactive, online decision aid to help consenting adults complete an advance directive.Third-year medical students at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) used an online, multimedia decision aid to help an adult discuss his or her wishes for medical treatment and create a formal advance directive for health care. Students then wrote essays about their experiences, and an iterative analysis was used for thematic categorization.Four distinct thematic categories emerged from students' essays: 1) students' personal experiences with advance care planning; 2) participants' experiences; 3) recommendations for practice regarding advance care planning; and 4) feedback about the online decision aid.An interactive, online decision aid can play a meaningful role in educating medical professionals about advance care planning.