Supporting decision making for individuals living with dementia and their care partners with knowledge translation: An umbrella review

Living with dementia requires decision making about numerous topics including daily activities and advance care planning (ACP). Both individuals living with dementia and care partners require informed support for decision making. We conducted an umbrella review to assess knowledge translation (KT) interventions supporting decision making for individuals living with dementia and their informal care partners. Four databases were searched using 50 different search terms, identifying 22 reviews presenting 32 KT interventions. The most common KT decision topic was ACP (N = 21) which includes advanced care directives, feeding options, and placement in long-term care. The majority of KT interventions targeted care partners only (N = 16), or both care partners and individuals living with dementia (N = 13), with fewer interventions (N = 3) targeting individuals living with dementia. Overall, our umbrella review offers insights into the beneficial impacts of KT interventions, such as increased knowledge and confidence, and decreased decisional conflicts. HIGHLIGHTS: Knowledge translation (KT) helps people with dementia and caregivers make decisions. Our umbrella review investigated whether KT interventions helped decision making. KT interventions were beneficial, with advance care planning being the main topic. Thirteen (41%) of the 32 KT interventions were found to be freely accessible online. We recommend the creation of a KT toolkit to guide topic-specific decision making.