Context: Quality of palliative care and death in mainland China is at a low level of the rest of the world, the public is lacked of proper understanding of the relevant information is one of the important reasons. There has been a shift in policy of palliative care in municipalities recently in mainland China. Objectives: To measure the advance care planning-related knowledge and attitudes of Chinese community-dwelling older adults, in the hope of presenting a specific implementation of the strategy. Methods: We conducted a mixed-method sequential explanatory study, composed of a quantitative survey followed by qualitative interviews. The first quantitative phase included 523 community elderly individuals, who completed a validated questionnaire. After statistical analysis, a semistructured qualitative interview has been developed and conducted with 16 of them in order to help explain findings obtained in the first phase. Results: The study was conducted with 523 community-dwelling older adults. The cognition level of advance care planning (ACP) was low, and attitude toward ACP was active. Living alone or living with a spouse (and children), have a religion, poor health condition, and life-sustaining treatment-related experience can affect how they behave with ACP. However, lack of trust in ACP, lack of life education and relevant legislation or policies, and Chinese traditional culture and emotion may impede their take-up. Conclusions: This study indicated that the awareness and participation of ACP of community-dwelling older adults in mainland China are not enough. The influence of national conditions and culture should be fully considered during the process of ACP development.

Background: Acculturation is the process of two different cultures coming into contact. It is unclear how acculturation influences Chinese immigrants’ engagement in advance care planning due to the complexity and multifaceted nature of both acculturation and advance care planning. Aims: To synthesize evidence regarding the role of Chinese immigrants’ acculturation in their engagement in advance care planning. Design: Systematic mixed-method review, registered in PROSPERO (CRD42021231822). Data sources: EMBASE, MEDLINE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were searched for publications until January 21, 2021. Results: Twenty-one out of 1112 identified articles were included in the analysis. Of those 21 articles, 17 had a qualitative design and 13 originated from the United States. Three of four quantitative studies reported that higher acculturation levels were associated with better knowledge or higher rate of engagement in advance care planning. Analysis of qualitative studies showed that Chinese immigrants’ engagement in advance care planning was associated with their: (1) self-perceived cultural identity (native or non-native); (2) interpretation of filial piety (traditional or modern); and (3) interpretation of autonomy (individual or familial). To facilitate their engagement, Chinese immigrants prefer an implicit approach, non-family-related initiators, contextualization advance care planning in Chinese culture and using Chinese language. Conclusion: Chinese immigrants’ willingness to engage in advance care planning varied with their acculturation level. To engage them in advance care planning, we recommend adapting the introduction of advance care planning to address people’s perceptions of their cultural identity, filial piety, and autonomy, as well as their preference for certain approach, initiator, context, and language.

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Conclusion Age and prior serious illness experience were significantly associated with readiness to discuss EOL care with HCP and signing official papers about preferred EOL care. Advocacy programs targeting participants of different age groups and prior experience may be helpful.