Abstract

Background: The Patient Self-Determination Act passed in 1991 requires staff in health care facilities, such as skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, home health services and primary care offices to ask patients about advanced directives. Despite this, actual completions of advance directives in America remain low.

Objective: To determine the barriers and facilitators to the completion of advance directives in healthy, non-health care employed individuals aged 45-65. It is believed healthy individuals in this age group both desire the advance directive, and have strong opinions regarding their end of life preferences.

Methods: This study used a cross sectional survey design to study the barriers and facilitators to the completion of advanced directives in healthy adults aged 45-65 who are not employed in healthcare. A 16 item survey was developed to collect demographic data, ascertain participants' general knowledge of advance directives, and determine the desire of this age group for end of life treatments.

Findings: The findings for this age group were consistent with the literature. Individuals in this age group desired an advance directive, and considered it an important document, and felt the discussion is best started with a health care provider.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 10124279; ProQuest document ID: 1807632084. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Michael L. Dion, MS, RN, CCRN, TNCC, CNIII

Sigma Membership

Beta Tau

Type

Thesis

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Cross-Sectional

Research Approach

Quantitative Research

Keywords:

Advanced Care Directives, End-of-Life Planning, Healthy Populations, Palliative Care

Advisors

Bakerjian, Debra;Murray-Garcia, Jann

Degree

Master's

Degree Grantor

University of California, Davis

Degree Year

2016

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2022-03-29

Full Text of Presentation

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