Background ACP has been suggested to be beneficial for improving the quality of end-of-life care, but its implementation by multidisciplinary professionals in community-based comprehensive care has not progressed. Therefore, we examined the effects of an ACP practice education intervention on improving ACP practice skills among multidisciplinary professionals responsible for comprehensive community care.

Methods A one-group pre- and posttest design with no control group was used, in A-city community comprehensive care who were recruited through publicity. The educational intervention consisted of three 90-minute group training sessions that provided knowledge of ACP, role-played ACP practice, and instruction on how to use the ACP guide booklet. Questions included basic attributes as well as awareness of ACP, FATCOD-Form B-J (abbreviated version), etc. The study period was from July 2019 to January 2020.

Ethical considerations The study was conducted with the approval of Bukkyo University’s Ethical Review for Research Involving Human Subjects (Approval No. 2019–19-B).

Results There were 39 participants, 51% nurses, 30.8% care manegares, 7.7% care workers, 5.1% pharmacists, mean age 45.5 years. 84% of the participants felt that they lacked knowledge of ACP. On the FATCOD scale, the positivity toward caring for dying patients increased significantly from 8.95 (±1.3) before the intervention to 10.7 (±1.9) immediately after the intervention (p = .15), but three months later the score had decreased to 9.52 (±1.5), although the increase was still significantly higher than before the intervention.

Discussion Although many professionals recognized the need for ACP in comprehensive community care, the number of those with actual experience practicing ACP was still small. Factors such as insufficient ACP knowledge and time availability were cited as reasons, suggesting the need for education and dissemination activities on ACP practice methods using ACP practice role-plays and AC Guide booklets targeting professionals from multiple disciplines in comprehensive community care.