Awareness, approval and completion of advance directives in older adults in Switzerland

Swiss Medical Weekly
Sarah VilpertGian Domenico Borasio

Abstract

Advance directives enable people to describe their preferences for medical treatment (living will) and/or to appoint a healthcare proxy who may decide on their behalf should they lose decision-making capacity. Advance directives are potentially important in determining the course of end-of-life care, as deaths are frequently preceded by end-of-life treatment decisions, which often require someone to make decisions on the patient's behalf. Switzerland introduced legally binding advance directives through its new child and adult protection law of 2013. But there is still no comprehensive evidence on older persons' awareness, attitudes and behaviours with regard to advance directives in Switzerland. Our study aimed to assess levels of awareness, approval and completion of advance directives, as well as their respective associations with sociodemographic characteristics in the Swiss population aged 55 and older. Our study was cross-sectional and used data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which included a special module on end-of-life issues in wave 6 (2015) in Switzerland (n = 2085). Two years after the introduction of advance directives in Switzerland, 78.7% of adults aged 55 years and older had ...Continue Reading

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