Background

Advance care planning is a key aspect of palliative care and aims to establish patient preferences for future care, benefiting patients and their families. Palliative care, including advance care planning, is often provided by primary care physicians. Levels of advance care planning, however, remain low internationally. We aimed to conduct a systematic literature review to understand the barriers and facilitators encountered by patients when considering advance care planning conversations within the primary care setting.

Methods

Five electronic databases (Ovid MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL and Scopus) and grey literature were searched in April 2025. Quantitative and qualitative data were extracted and synthesised using a convergent, integrated approach. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool was used to assess study quality.

Results

From 2495 articles, 48 studies were included. Barriers and facilitators can each be categorized into three themes, with further subthemes: 1) Professional factors, which encompassed the relationship between patient and healthcare professional, the skills and attributes of the healthcare professional, and the specific role of the healthcare professional in the advance care planning process; 2) Patient factors, including perceptions of self, family role, personal and religious views of advance care planning, and personal characteristics; 3) Features of the advance care planning conversation.

Conclusions

To enhance advance care planning uptake, there should be protection of relationships between healthcare professional and patient, adequate time for face-to-face conversations, and relevant training for healthcare professionals. More widely, increasing public awareness of these topics is vital. It is essential to balance standardisation to encourage and support these conversations, whilst maintaining an individualised approach.