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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Relationships between various attitudes towards self-determination in health care with special reference to an advance directive | | Author(s) | Martin Eisemann, Jörg Richter |
| Journal title | Journal of Medical Ethics, vol 25, no 1, February 1999 |
| Pages | pp 37-41 |
| Keywords | Medical care ; Patients ; Rights [elderly] ; Wills ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Social surveys ; Sweden. |
| Annotation | Patient self-determination in health care has gained broad interest; and in an attempt to solve problems related to doctors' decision making in such circumstances, advance directives have been developed. This study examined the relationships between public attitudes towards patient autonomy and advance directives. A stratified random sample of 600 adults in northern Sweden was surveyed by questionnaire with a 78.2% response rate. They were asked about their wish for control of their health care, their concerns about health care, their treatment preferences in a life-threatening situation (both reversible and irreversible), and their attitudes towards the application of advance directives. Several relationships between various aspects of self-determination in health care (desire for control, fears of over-treatment, and choice of treatment level) in general and advance directives, in particular, were found. Those who wanted to have a say in their health care (about 94%) also mainly supported use of an advance directive. The fact that almost 30% of respondents were undecided concerning their personal use of advanced directives points to a lack of knowledge and to the need to educate the public on these issues. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990518001 A |
| Classmark | LK: LF: IKR: VTH: TOB: 3F: 76P |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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