Authors

Daniel Bárcenas Villegas

Position

Máster en Gestión de Recursos Humanos en Enfermería. Máster en Bioética y Humanización de la Asistencia. Hospital San Juan de Dios del Aljarafe. Bormujos (Sevilla)

Contact address

Daniel Bárcenas Villegas. Plz. Alcalde Lucas González Bonaño, 24. 21510 San Bartolomé de la Torre (Huelva).

Contact email: dbarcenasvillegas@icloud.com

Abstract

Objectives: to understand the level of autonomy of patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a regional hospital, with a diagnosis of severity which could make them candidate to a Limitation of Therapeutic Effort (LTE) and/or organ donation.
Method: a descriptive transversal study in the ICU of the Critical Care and Emergencies Unit of the Hospital San Juan de Dios del Aljarafe de Bormujos (Seville). The clinical records of all patients admitted to the ICU were reviewed (from January, 2011 to January, 2014) in order to select those where some type of LTE and/or organ donation had been recorded (n= 146). Variables: age, gender, type of LTE, person who made the decision for LTE and/or donation, anticipated directives or living will (LW). Square Chi Test was used for hypothesis test contrast.
Results: a 60.3% of patients were male, 58.1% was between 71 and 98-year-old. There were 79.5% cases of LTE and 10.3% of donations. The family made the decision in 82.5% of men and 69.2% of women candidate to LTE. Regarding organ donation, the family made the decision on 100% of cases, regardless of patient gender.
Conclusions: the autonomy of women candidate to LTE is taken over by their family twice as often as patients; in the case of men, almost three times as often. The autonomy regarding organ donation is completely taken over by the family. There are no cases of anticipated directives or lving wills registered in clinical records.

Keywords:

autonomy; organ donation; Limitation of Therapeutic Effort; anticipated directives or living wills; intensive care; research; Descriptive Study

Versión en Español

Título:

Autonomía en pacientes de UCI: limitación del esfuerzo terapéutico y donación de órganos