Attitudes Towards Living wills and Factors affecting Living wills writing decisions of Borabue hospital’ Patients.

Abstract

ABSTRACT

           The purpose of this Cross-sectional Analytical Research study was to explore the attitudes of patients about the living wills and factors that affect decision making to write
a living will. The instrument of this study was a self-developed questionnaire.
This questionnaire was divided into 3 parts include general personal information, tests of knowledges about palliative care and living wills and tests of attitudes about living wills. Content validity was established by the expert. Reliability test for knowledge testing by using Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR20) was 0.87. Cronbach’s alpha for the attitudes testing was 0.83. Data were collected by usingthe self-administered questionnaire by giving questionnaires to patients admittedin the Borabue hospital between 1 – 15 August, 2014. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics include percentage, mean and standard deviation and analysis statistics by using Chi-square test. The results showed that the overall attitude towards the living wills of the participants were moderate and high levels of 61.4 and 37.1 percent respectively, while the group of low attitude to living wills had only 1.4 per cent. Participants had decided to write living wills in 57.1 percent. And the relationship of the factors that were associated with the decision made living wills significant statistically in patients who made decisions about treatment for themselves, people who recognized living wills before, those who had a deep understanding of palliative treatment and living wills at a high level and patients who had overall attitude towards living wills remain high. Other factors include age, gender, education, income, marital status, medical history or their relatives had been intubated before and perspective on death had no relation to the decision making in living wills. The discovery of such showed the focus should be paid to educate medical personnel in both hospital and community about palliative care and living wills to disseminate the knowledge to patients and the public.

Keywords: Living wills, Palliative care, Patient’s attitudes