Abstract: Objective: To investigate the effect of family-based Advance Care Planning on dignity, quality of life and quality of death of patients with terminal cancer. Methods: Totally 88 end-stage tumor patients were randomly divided into the experimental group (n=43) and the control group (n=45). Routine care was offered to patients of the control group while patients in the experimental group received family-centered Advance Care Planning on the basis of routine care. Repeated measurement analysis of variance was used to compare the quality of life and dignity of the two groups before intervention, one month after intervention and two months after intervention. Besides, T-test was used to compare the 10 core factors and total scores of optimal death in the two groups of patients after intervention. Results: The between-group effect, time effect and interaction effect of the difference of life quality and dignity scores between the two groups were statistically significant (P<0.05). After intervention, statistically significant differences were observed when comparing the 10 core factors and total scores between the two groups (P<0.05). Conclusion: The family-centered Advance Care Planning can effectively enhance the dignity level of patients with terminal cancer and improve their quality of life as well as the quality of death.

Key words: Advance Care Planning; malignant tumors; end-stage; dignity; quality of life; good death