Advance directives about medical treatment.

Advance directives and medical treatment at the end of life.

To assess the consequences of advance medical directives--which explicitly specify a patient's preferences for one or more specific types of medical treatment in the event of a loss of competence--we analyze the medical care of elderly Medicare beneficiaries who died between 1985 and 1995. We compare the care of patients from states that adopted laws enhancing incentives for compliance with adv...

The growing importance of advance medical directives.

Advance directives for mental health treatment.

Advance directives are designed to establish a person's preferences for treatment if the person becomes incompetent in the future or unable to communicate those preferences to treatment providers. Mental health advance directives are similar to the more commonly used directives for end-of-life medical decisions. A patient must be competent to execute a mental health advance directive, and the d...

Community attitudes and knowledge about advance care directives.

BACKGROUND Patients and their physicians are increasingly being encouraged to discuss end-of-life decisions. The purpose of this study was to enhance understanding of the public's attitudes and knowledge about medical decision making and advance care directives. METHODS Eight focus groups of community members discussed their understanding of and attitudes about advance care directives. Transc...

What you need to know about advance directives.