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The prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey

BACKGROUND: To determine the extent to which members of the general population have talked to their physician about their wishes regarding medical treatment at the end of life, to describe the prevalence of advance directives on euthanasia, and to identify associated factors. METHOD: This study used...

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Autores principales: De Vleminck, Aline, Pardon, Koen, Houttekier, Dirk, Van den Block, Lieve, Vander Stichele, Robert, Deliens, Luc
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26643482
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-015-0068-1
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author De Vleminck, Aline
Pardon, Koen
Houttekier, Dirk
Van den Block, Lieve
Vander Stichele, Robert
Deliens, Luc
author_facet De Vleminck, Aline
Pardon, Koen
Houttekier, Dirk
Van den Block, Lieve
Vander Stichele, Robert
Deliens, Luc
author_sort De Vleminck, Aline
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: To determine the extent to which members of the general population have talked to their physician about their wishes regarding medical treatment at the end of life, to describe the prevalence of advance directives on euthanasia, and to identify associated factors. METHOD: This study used data from the cross-sectional Health Interview Study (HIS) 2008 that collected data from a representative sample (N = 9651) of the Belgian population. RESULTS: Of all respondents, 4.4 % had spoken to their physician about their wishes regarding medical treatment at the end of life, while 1.8 % had an advance directive on euthanasia. Factors positively associated with discussions regarding wishes for medical treatment at the end of life were being female, being older in age, having poorer health status and having more GP contacts. People older than 55 years and living in Flanders or Brussels were more likely than the youngest age categories to have an advance directive on euthanasia. CONCLUSION: Younger people, men, people living in the Walloon region of Belgium, people without a longstanding illness, chronic condition or disability and people with few GP contacts could represent a target group for education regarding advance care planning. Public information campaigns and education of physicians may help to enable the public and physicians to engage more in advance care planning.
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spelling pubmed-46712162015-12-08 The prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey De Vleminck, Aline Pardon, Koen Houttekier, Dirk Van den Block, Lieve Vander Stichele, Robert Deliens, Luc BMC Palliat Care Research Article BACKGROUND: To determine the extent to which members of the general population have talked to their physician about their wishes regarding medical treatment at the end of life, to describe the prevalence of advance directives on euthanasia, and to identify associated factors. METHOD: This study used data from the cross-sectional Health Interview Study (HIS) 2008 that collected data from a representative sample (N = 9651) of the Belgian population. RESULTS: Of all respondents, 4.4 % had spoken to their physician about their wishes regarding medical treatment at the end of life, while 1.8 % had an advance directive on euthanasia. Factors positively associated with discussions regarding wishes for medical treatment at the end of life were being female, being older in age, having poorer health status and having more GP contacts. People older than 55 years and living in Flanders or Brussels were more likely than the youngest age categories to have an advance directive on euthanasia. CONCLUSION: Younger people, men, people living in the Walloon region of Belgium, people without a longstanding illness, chronic condition or disability and people with few GP contacts could represent a target group for education regarding advance care planning. Public information campaigns and education of physicians may help to enable the public and physicians to engage more in advance care planning. BioMed Central 2015-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4671216/ /pubmed/26643482 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-015-0068-1 Text en © De Vleminck et al. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
De Vleminck, Aline
Pardon, Koen
Houttekier, Dirk
Van den Block, Lieve
Vander Stichele, Robert
Deliens, Luc
The prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey
title The prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey
title_full The prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey
title_fullStr The prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey
title_full_unstemmed The prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey
title_short The prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey
title_sort prevalence in the general population of advance directives on euthanasia and discussion of end-of-life wishes: a nationwide survey
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26643482
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12904-015-0068-1
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