Right to die

The present study is a replication of a study concerning physicians' attitudes toward advance directives originally studied in 1989. A cross-sectional design was employed to assess whether physicians' attitudes toward advance directives had changed substantially since the passing of the Patient Self-Determination Act in 1990. The sample was obtained by mailing questionnaires to 400 physicians on the East central coast of Florida, chosen according to specialty and presumed interaction with advance directives. Questions included demographics information about participants, usage and discussion of advance directives by physicians, and potential barriers to physician-initiated discussions. Results correlated with the original authors'. There were positive associations between attitude and year of graduation, gender, type of practice, size of town physician practiced in, and religion with chi-square testing. Overall results indicated a positive attitude, and a desire for patient autonomy.

Research has shown that generally no more than 20% of populations surveyed have completed Advance Medical Directives and that there is a strong ethnic variation in their choice (i.e. Protestants and Whites were more likely to have an Advance Medical Directive than Jews, Catholics, Hispanics, or Blacks). This thesis developed and tested the hypothesis that the use of Advance Medical Directives by Jews would comparably vary inversely with their degree of social integration as measured by their degree of orthodoxy. Survey results confirmed this hypothesis, but more significantly demonstrated that for all samples tested, regardless of religion, 74% of the over-65 respondents had completed an Advance Medical Directive. It is postulated that this high rate of implementation is an effect of the lower degree of social integration of the Boca Raton retirees brought about by a physical relocation to Florida from their former family, residential, and business networks.