Since 1991 enactment of the Pt. Self-Determination Act, institutions have been required to advise patients about advance directives regarding life support and document patients' expressed intentions regarding ADs in permanent hospital records. This documentation, identified at admission if expressed at all, is to be referred to in the case of patients' loss of decision-making capacity. Recent research has begun to identify correlates of both the desire to and act of expressing ADs, but the research is significantly limited. The proposed study would address some of these limitations. Specifically, the goals of the research include: 1. translation and validation of an existing scale, the Life Support Preference Questionnaire to a Spanish language version; 2. expansion of the existing literature on biographic correlates related to patterns of advance directives decisions to include a broad representation of adults and a variety of variables previously studied separately; 3) estimation of the brief stability (3-day) of hospitalized adults' ADs, and 4) identification of whether completion of the LSPQ questionnaire by patients stimulates expression of or alteration of previously expressed ADs. The research goals will be achieved through a collaborative effort involving faculty from two schools, Nursing and Education, at a public university, and faculty from a large, community based teaching hospital. Subjects will be drawn from community, clinic, and in-hospital populations. Findings from the project will allow greater representation of ethnic minority subjects in future studies, may influence how ADs are introduced to patients upon admission, and increase knowledge regarding the stability of expressed ADs.
| Froman, Robin D; Owen, Steven V (2005) Randomized study of stability and change in patients' advance directives. Res Nurs Health 28:398-407 |
| Froman, Robin D; Owen, Steven V (2003) Validation of the Spanish Life Support Preference Questionnaire (LSPQ). J Nurs Scholarsh 35:33-6 |
