Authors

Isabel María Patrón Manzano

Position

Enfermera. Urgencias de Atención Primaria. Hospital Nuestra Señora de la Montaña. Cáceres. Profesora Asociada en Ciencias de la Salud. Facultad de Enfermería y Terapia Ocupacional. Universidad de Extremadura. Cáceres

Contact address

Isabel María Patrón Manzano. C/ Gloria Fuertes, 19. 10005 Cáceres

Contact email: patron.isabel8@gmail.com

Abstract

Objective: to determine if healthcare professionals and users of the Extremaduran Health System are familiar with the Advance Directive document (ADd), and to assess the opinion of professionals in order to give effect to citizen rights, improve healthcare planning, communication and decision making.
Method: a descriptive transversal study, targeted to users and healthcare professionals from different levels of care of the province of Cáceres, through two questionnaires designed for the study, specific for users and professionals. Period of study: from April to June, 2015. The sample included 145 users and 130 healthcare professionals. The analysis approach used was descriptive statistics. The SPSS statistical package was used in its 20.0 version.
Results: a 62.1% of users have no knowledge of what an ADd is; 67.6% would like to have it processed, and 89.7% of users understand that it is convenient to plan and write down the medical care that they would like to receive at the end of their lives. Regarding professionals, 96.2% are aware of what an ADd is; 98.5% believe it is a useful document to plan patient care, but 76.2% of them don’t know how to process it, and 76.9% are not aware of whether their patients have one.
Conclusions: professionals have knowledge of ADds, but it is not incorporated into their professional activity. Users wish to choose their end-of-life patient care; however, none of them have processed this document. For this reason, it is necessary to improve the communication between professionals and users, and to have tools that will facilitate the access to ADds as part of the Patient Care Process.

Keywords:

living will; advance directives; Previous instructions; end-of-life care; Bioethics; Bioethics

Versión en Español

Título:

Documento de expresión anticipada de voluntades: nivel de conocimientos de los profesionales sanitarios y usuarios del Sistema Extremeño de Salud