Résumé :
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[BDSP. Notice produite par INIST XjZ9R0x4. Diffusion soumise à autorisation]. Context Effectiveness of legislation promoting advance directives and legalizing physician-assisted suicide depends on patients'understanding their legal options about end-of-life care. However, outpatients'understanding of their legal options at the end of life has not been studied. Objectives To estimate the percentage of outpatients who are informed about 4 areas relevant to end-of-life care : refusal and withdrawal of lifesaving treatments, physician-assisted suicide, active euthanasia, and double effect ; and to determine whether authoring advance directives, experiencing illness, acting as a proxy for health care decisions, and caring for an ill loved one are associated with better knowledge in end-of-life care. Design Cross-sectional survey. Setting and Participants One thousand consecutive English-speaking, adult patients attending 1 university-based internal medicine clinic and 3 community-based, university-affiliated, mixed internal medicine and family practice clinics in Oregon during May and June 1999. Main Outcome Measures Percentage of correct responses in the 4 topic areas and total knowledge score, adjusted for demographic (eg, age, race, educational level, income level, marital status) and experiential (eg, health, proxy decision making, advance directives, and death of a loved one) factors. Results Of the 1000 patients invited to participate, 728 (73%) consented and completed the questionnaire and were included in the analysis. (...)
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