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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The influence of physician race, age, and gender on physician attitudes toward advance care directives and preferences for end of life decision-making | | Author(s) | Eric W Mebane, Roy F Oman, Leo T Kroonen |
| Journal title | Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol 47, no 5, May 1999 |
| Pages | pp 579-591 |
| Keywords | General practitioners ; Ethnic groups ; Attitude ; Terminal care ; Medical care ; Euthanasia ; Wills ; Social surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | This study targeted US physicians in primary care (i.e. general practitioners - GPs), selected to to maximise the number of blacks participating. The 502 of 2000 GPs (28%) returning the questionnaire included 280 white and 157 black GPs. With regard to attitudes toward patient care, 58% of white GPs agreed that tube-feeding in terminally ill patients is "heroic", agreed with by only 28% of black GPs. White GPs are more likely than black GPs to find physically-assisted suicide an acceptable treatment alternative (36.6% vs 26.5% of black GPs). With regard to preferences for future treatment of themselves for a persistent vegetative state scenario, black GPs were more than six times more likely than whites to request aggressive treatments for themselves. Whites were almost three times as likely to want physician assisted suicide (29.3 vs 11.8%) in this scenario. For a state of brain damage with no terminal illness, most GPs did not want aggressive treatment. White GPs, on the other hand, were more likely to request physician assisted suicide (22.5% vs 9.9%) in this scenario. Results suggest that, by race, physicians share similar preferences for end-of-life treatment with their patient counterparts. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990825306 A |
| Classmark | QT6: TK: DP: LV: LK: CY: VTH: 3F: 7T |
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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