Patient knowledge and physician predictions of treatment preferences after discussion of advance directives.
OBJECTIVE
To determine patient knowledge about life-sustaining treatments and physician understanding of patient preferences for proxies and treatments after outpatient discussions about advance directives.


METHODS
Cross-sectional interview-based and questionnaire-based survey.


METHODS
Two university general internal medicine practices, two Department of Veterans Affairs general internal medicine practices, and one university-based geriatrics practice, in two different cities.


METHODS
Fifty-six patients of primary care internists.


METHODS
Physicians discussed "advance directives" (ADs) with one randomly selected patient during an outpatient visit.


RESULTS
After the discussions, physicians identified the patient's proxy and predicted the patient's preferences for treatment in 20 scenarios. Patients provided treatment preferences in the 20 scenarios, the name of their preferred surrogate decision maker, and their understanding of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and mechanical ventilation. Of the 39 patients who discussed resuscitation, 43% were able to identify two important characteristics; 26% identified none; 66% did not know that most patients need mechanical ventilation after undergoing resuscitation. None of the 43 patients who had a discussion about mechanical ventilation had a good understanding of it; 67% did not know that patients generally cannot talk while on ventilators; 46% expressed serious misconceptions about ventilators. There was poor agreement between physicians and their patients regarding treatment preferences in 18 of 20 scenarios (kappa -0.04 to 0.31). Physicians correctly identified the proxy 89% of the time (kappa 0.78).


CONCLUSIONS
Patients leave routine AD discussions with serious misconceptions about life-sustaining treatments. Physicians are unable to predict treatment preferences but do learn about patients' preferences for surrogate decision makers.
Section of Palliative Care and Medical Ethics, Center for Medical Ethics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, PA 15213, USA.
G S
GS
Fischer
J A
JA
Tulsky
M R
MR
Rose
L A
LA
Siminoff
R M
RM
Arnold
D016223:Advance Directives; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires