OBJECTIVES To describe trends in advance directive (AD) completion from 2000 to 2010 and to explore the relationship between AD and hospitalization and hospital death at the end of life. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study. SETTING Health and Retirement Study (HRS). PARTICIPANTS HRS participants who died between 2000 and 2010 and were aged 60 and older at death (N = 6,122). MEASUREMENTS T...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the emotional impact of physician-initiated advance directive discussions. METHODS One hundred ambulatory patients aged 65 years and older were randomly assigned to receive either a physician-initiated discussion of advance directive choices of a discussion of health promotion issues. Prediscussion, immediate postdiscussion, and 1-week postdiscussion measures ...

In the last decade the use of advance directives or living wills has become increasingly common. This paper is concerned with those advance directives in which the user opts for withdrawal of active treatment in a future situation where he or she is incompetent to consent to conservative management but where that incompetence is potentially reversible. This type of directive assumes that the in...

PURPOSE Advance directives are important planning and decision-making tools for individuals in nursing homes. DESIGN AND METHODS By using the nursing facility Minimum Data Set, we examined the prevalence of advance directives at admission and 12 months post-admission. RESULTS The prevalence of having any advance directive at admission declined slightly from 2000 to 2004, whereas the prevale...

OBJECTIVE Studies show a high potential demand for psychiatric advance directives but low completion rates. The authors conducted a randomized study of a structured, manualized intervention to facilitate completion of psychiatric advance directives. METHOD A total of 469 patients with severe mental illness were randomly assigned to a facilitated psychiatric advance directive session or a cont...