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Older People and their Families

An investigation of older peoples' and their families' views about autonomy and decision-making in later life

Mon, 4 April 2005

Professor Sarah E Hampson, Professor Sara Arber and colleagues in the Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, are coming to the end of a Nuffield-funded research project investigating older peoples and their families' views about autonomy and decision-making in later life.

The broad aim of the project was to increase the frequency and quality of end-of-life discussions between older people, their doctors and their family members. Some finding have been recently reported in two articles in The Times - http: //www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1523121,00.html and http: //www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1522606_2,00.html

Sixty-nine people over 65 years were interviewed about their views of medical care at the end of life, including the circumstances under which life-prolonging technologies would be appropriate for people in general and for themselves. The researchers also interviewed 53 health-care “confidants” of these older people. These were the relatives or friends who would be involved in the decision about life-prolonging measures if the older person became incapacitated.

Most men favoured the use of life-prolonging medical technologies for people in general (73%) and themselves (64%), whereas only a minority of women were in favour of life-prolonging medical technologies in general (25%) or for themselves (33%).

Men and women were more likely to favour CPR (51%) than ventilation (39%) or artificial feeding (30%).

Confidants were more in favour of each kind of life-prolonging technology than were the older people: CPR (72%), ventilation (51%), and artificial feeding (40%).

Most men and women (72%) and their confidants (60%) believed that they had not discussed their views about life prolongation with each other.

These findings indicate gender differences in views on end-of-life care, and the potential for end-of-life decisions made by confidants to differ from the wishes of the dying person.

Further information can be obtained by e-mailing Professor Sarah Hampson at s.hampson@surrey.ac.uk.

Last Updated Mon, 4 April 2005