Patients prepare advance directives in an effort to maintain autonomy during periods of incapacity or at the end of life. Advance directive documents are specific to the state in which the patient lives, but an effective strategy in the family physician's office involves more than filling out a form. Physician barriers to completing an advance directive include lack of time and discomfort with ...

This paper uses a case example to review the current legal status of advance directives, as well as their ethical rationale. We draw attention to ongoing efforts to institutionalize advance directives, and to some of the tractable and intractable reasons why advance directives are ineffective. We then introduce the concept of advance care planning, and argue that we should not assume that advan...

OBJECTIVES After years of public discussion too little is still known about willingness to accept the idea of writing an advance directive among various groups of people in EU countries. We investigated knowledge about and willingness to accept such a directive in cancer patients, healthy controls, physicians, and nursing staff in Germany. METHODS Cancer patients, healthy controls, nursing st...

this study considers an eoq inventory model with advance payment policy in a fuzzy situation by employing two types of fuzzy numbers that are trapezoidal and triangular. two fuzzy models are developed here. in the first model the cost parameters are fuzzified, but the demand rate is treated as crisp constant. in the second model, the demand rate is fuzzified but the cost parameters are treated ...

PURPOSE To evaluate the clinical outcome after placement of AdVance® sling in men with stress urinary incontinence after prostate surgery. MATERIALS AND METHODS Incontinence was assessed on basis of number of pad usage. Patients' satisfaction was evaluated using a non-validated patient questionnaire at 12 months post-operatively. RESULTS Incontinence cure rate (no pad usage) was 61.5% (16/2...

PURPOSE This study sought to determine the rate of advance directive completion among US oncologists and factors influencing such a decision. METHODS We surveyed 7590 members of the American Society of Clinical Oncology using a web-based questionnaire. RESULTS The response rate was 8.1%. Most respondents (59%) had completed at least 1 document: 9% living will, 9% power of attorney for healt...

OBJECTIVE To examine the acute effects of Advance, a potential reduced exposure product (PREP) for smokers marketed as a means to reduce exposure to toxic gases and tobacco specific nitrosamines. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS Latin square ordered, three condition, laboratory based, crossover design with 20 smokers of light or ultra-light cigarettes (15 or more cigarettes/day). In each 2.5 hou...