The purpose of this study is to develop and pilot a questionnaire designed to assess the prevalence and characteristics of acts of physician assisted dying. Recent highly publicized cases of physician-assisted suicide have greatly intensified public and professional debate about the morality of such actions. Absent from these discussion is any factual information on the prevalence of requests for and acts of physician assisted dying in the United States, information which is critical to the formulation of clinical practice guidelines and public policy responsive to the realities of modern society and the current practice of medicine. The questionnaire will also assess the characteristics of those physician respondents and their patients involved in requests for (or cases of) aid-in-dying. These characteristics will include not only descriptive variables (such as age, gender, religion, specialty of doctors, patient diagnosis and functional status) but also will inquire about the decision criteria applied by the physician in responding to the patient's request for assistance in hastening death. These criteria will include the voluntary nature of the request, the influence of physical pain on the request, use of consultation with nurses, social workers and other professionals, and physician evaluation of the patient's cognitive status. Because of the sensitive nature of the research question and the critical importance of a high response rate in interpreting such data, assistance in the questionnaire development and piloting process will be contracted to the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, a survey organization with extensive experience and success in surveying professionals on sensitive sociocultural issues. Questionnaire development will utilize an iterative cognitive interview procedure whereby respondents' verbal discussion of questions posed is used to detect ambiguities of phrasing or wording and to identify sensitive topics, thus permitting corrective revision. A """"""""seeded"""""""" sampling method will be used for the pilot whereby a subset of recipients known to have assisted in hastening a patient's death will be anonymously included in the sample.
| Meier, Diane E; Emmons, Carol-Ann; Litke, Ann et al. (2003) Characteristics of patients requesting and receiving physician-assisted death. Arch Intern Med 163:1537-42 |
| Meier, D E; Emmons, C A; Wallenstein, S et al. (1998) A national survey of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in the United States. N Engl J Med 338:1193-201 |
