What If I Get Seriously Ill? A Virtual Workshop for Advance Care Planning During COVID-19

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 has brought public attention to questions regarding the type of care individuals would want to receive in the event of becoming suddenly critically ill. Advance care planning (ACP) is one way to help individuals and families address these questions. However, social distancing, stay-at-home orders, and hospital visitor restrictions have raised new barriers to facilitating these conversations. Here, we describe the implementation and evaluation of a novel, public-facing, and two-part virtual ACP workshop. Participants were recruited through electronic communication, and evaluations were collected through surveys administered after each part of the workshop. We found that using a virtual format allowed us to reach a large and geographically diverse audience. Participants were likely to recommend the workshop to friends and family. There was no change in ACP engagement between the postsession surveys between the first and second parts of the workshop.