Palliative care and other physicians’ knowledge, attitudes and practice relating to the law on withholding/withdrawing life-sustaining treatment: Survey results
To effectively care for people who are terminally ill, including those without decision-making capacity, palliative care physicians must know and understand the legal standing of Advance Care Planning in their jurisdiction of practice. This includes the use of advance directives/living wills and substitute decision-makers who can legally consent to or refuse treatment if there is no valid advance directive.
This study aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitudes and practices of medical specialists most often involved in end-of-life care in relation to the law on withholding/withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from adults without decision-making capacity.
A pre-piloted survey was posted to specialists in palliative, emergency, geriatric, renal and respiratory medicine; intensive care; and medical oncology in three Australian States. Surveys were analysed using SPSS 20 and SAS 9.3.
The overall response rate was 32% (867/2702) - 52% from palliative care specialists. Palliative care specialists and geriatricians had significantly more positive attitudes towards the law ([Formula: see text]; p < 0.001) and higher levels of knowledge about the withholding/withdrawing life-sustaining treatment law ([Formula: see text]; p < 0.001) than did the other specialists, while still having critical gaps in their knowledge.
A high level of knowledge of the law is essential to ensure that patients' wishes and decisions, expressed through Advance Care Planning, are respected to the maximum extent possible within the law, thereby according with the principles and philosophy of palliative care. It is also essential to protect health professionals from legal action resulting from unauthorised provision or cessation of treatment.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 19. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 February 2017.
All research outputs
#2,268,739
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Outputs from Palliative Medicine
#723
of 2,440 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#23,721
of 286,687 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Palliative Medicine
#13
of 32 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 30,070,006 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 92nd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,440 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 18.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 32 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 56% of its contemporaries.
