Declaration of interest None. Psychiatric advance directives are legal instruments that allow competent individuals to appoint proxies and specify how treatment decisions should be made in the event they become incompetent. These directives have been hailed as instruments for honouring patient autonomy, improving communication and ensuring participation in treatment decisions, and providing pra...

Background. The goal of advance directives is to help patients retain their dignity and autonomy by making their own decisions regarding end-stage medical treatment. The purpose of this study was to examine preferences of advance directives among general population in Korea. Method. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was performed from October 2007 to June 2008 in Seoul, Korea. A total of 336...

This article is a summary of research that investigated the Canadian and Australian legislative framework associated with advance directives in health care. The research focused on the context in which older people are encouraged to use advance directives. These are directions about refusal of medical treatment given in advance of incompetence. An advance directive may be given in a written doc...

IMPORTANCE Policies and practices that promote advance care planning and advance directive completion implicitly assume that patients' choices for end-of-life (EOL) care are stable over time, even with changes in health status. OBJECTIVE To systematically evaluate the evidence on the stability of EOL preferences over time and with changes in health status. EVIDENCE REVIEW We searched for lo...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to determine seniors' knowledge of and attitudes toward advance directive documents. METHODS We carried out a cross-sectional descriptive study in a primary care setting in the provinces of Albacete and Guadalajara, Spain (n = 464). RESULTS A total of 86.2% (95% CI: 83.0-89.5) of the participants were unaware of advance directive documents and only 3.4% ...

This study explores the attitude of German psychiatrists in leading positions towards joint crisis plans and psychiatric advance directives. This topic was examined by contacting 473 medical directors of German psychiatric hospitals and departments. They were asked to complete a questionnaire developed by us. That form contained questions about the incidence and acceptance of joint crisis plans...

For a variety of reasons, the most commonly used advance directive documents (eg, the living will) may not be very useful in many situations that older adults encounter. The durable power of attorney for health care is a more versatile document. We advocate focusing less on "signing away" certain interventions and more on clarifying the goals of care in the ambulatory setting.

Determining what proportion of the public has completed an advance directive and which population subgroups complete or do not complete such a directive is crucially important for planning purposes. Our research objective was to examine and compare advance directive completion, intention to complete, and noncompletion rates among citizens of one Canadian province. A telephone survey was conduct...

End-of-life care decision making carries paramount importance due to the advancements in medical sciences. Since medical science has evolved over the time and now has a potentiality to reshape the circumstances during death and in turn prolong lives, various ethical issues surround end-of-life care. The purpose of this narrative review is to discuss issues such as autonomous decision making, im...