Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Life‐Sustaining Treatment Decisions for Nursing Home Residents: Who Discusses, Who Decides and What Is Decided?

1999; Wiley; Volume: 47; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1532-5415.1999.tb01905.x

1532-5415

Jennifer R. Levin, Neil S. Wenger, Joseph G. Ouslander, Gail L. Zellman, John F. Schnelle, Joan L. Buchanan, Susan H. Hirsch, David B. Reuben,

Healthcare Decision-Making and Restraints

To evaluate whether nursing home residents and their families reported discussions about life-sustaining treatment with their physicians, the relationship between such discussions and orders to limit therapy, and predictors of physician-patient communication about life-sustaining treatment.Cross-sectional interviews and retrospective chart abstraction.Three regions: West Coast, New England, Western.A total of 413 nursing home residents, 363 family/surrogate interviews, and 192 resident interviews.Measured were (1) physician-resident communication about life-sustaining treatment and (2) presence of an advance directive or do not resuscitate (DNR) order in resident's chart.Seventy-four percent of residents had DNR orders, and 32% had advance directives; only 29% of residents reported discussions about life-sustaining treatment. Of residents with DNR orders who could have participated in discussions about life-sustaining treatment, nearly half reported they had not discussed CPR with their caregivers. Older age, longer duration of time living in nursing home, location in a New England nursing home, physician-family member discussion, and the presence of an advance directive in the medical chart were positively associated with having DNR orders. Physician-resident discussion was not associated with having a DNR order. For the subsample of interviewed residents, age and a diagnosis of cognitive impairment were negatively associated with a physician-resident discussion about life-sustaining treatment, whereas the likelihood of having a discussion increased with increasing numbers of medical diagnoses.Chart orders to limit therapy are common, but physician-resident discussions about life-sustaining treatments are not. Far more family members than residents report such discussions with the resident's physicians.