The Attitude of family doctors to advance directives

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Advance directive is a person‘s early instruction, which specifies his or her future medical care if they are no longer able to make decisions for themselves due to severity of a disease or treatment. Advance care plan includes living wills, do-not-resuscitate and do-not-hospitalize commands. Patients usually prefer health care providers to initiate advance care plan. Primary care is the most suitable place to inform and advise the patient on registration their living wills, which makes family doctor‘s role essential in the process. AIM To evaluate the attitude of family doctors towards advance directives. METHODS The study was performed in 178 family randomly selected doctors and postgraduate students working in Lithuania. The survey questionnaire was developed and edited according to similar studies [4-6]. Specialized anonymous original questionnaire based on previous researches was used to ask about their opinion whether a person should always have a right to decline the treatment, does it potentially have any influence to its‘ health, whether the possibility to choose always improves the quality of life and if there is an opportunity to ensure an appropriate health care at home in a case of decline to be treated at hospital. Also respondents were asked to specify the most important needs of critically ill patients, the importance of advance directives in Lithuania and which form of it is more convenient. SPSS 23.0 was used for statistical analyses. Proportions and their 95 % confidence intervals were used to describe qualitative nominal variables. If confidence intervals of proportions cross – there is no difference between groups, if intervals do not cross – difference between groups exist.[...].