RELATIONSHIP OF ADVANCE DIRECTIVES TO PHYSICIAN-PATIENT COMMUNICATION

Background: Although advance medical directives, such as living wills and durable powers of attorney for health care, are by themselves impe rfect instruments for expressing patients' treatment preferences, a po ssible benefit of these documents is that they will enhance patient-ph ysician communication, especially when end-of-life treatment decisions have to be made. Method: Structured interviews were completed for 115 seriously ill cancer patients and 22 of their physicians. The questio ns dealt with various aspects of advance directives, including communi cations between the two parties regarding general and specific treatme nt wishes. dispenses were compared in 37 physician-patient pairs for p atients who had executed advance directives and in 31 physician-patien t pairs for patients who had not executed advance directives. Results: Physicians were frequently unaware of their patients' advance directi ves. Although patients with advance directives were marginally more li kely than patients without advance directives to report discussions ab out end-of-life treatment decisions, only 34 (30%) out of the total of 115 patients claimed that they had any discussion of treatment decisi ons with their physicians. Such discussions tended to be about general life attitudes and feelings rather than specific treatments, such as use of artificial nutrition or ventilation. Conclusion: Despite public enthusiasm for the use of advance directives and great efforts to pro mote them, we found little evidence that these documents are associate d with enhanced communication between patients and physicians about en d-of-life treatment decisions.