Development and dissemination of institutional practice guidelines on medical end-of-life decisions in Dutch health care institutions

Berniek A.M. Hesselink, H. Roeline W. Pasman, Gerrit van der Wal, Paul J. van der Maas, Agnes van der Heide and Bregje D. Onwuteaka-Philipsen

Health Policy, 2010, vol. 94, issue 3, 230-238

Abstract: Objectives To describe how Dutch healthcare institutions develop and disseminate institutional practice guidelines on medical end-of-life decisions and policy statements on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (EAS) to relevant parties, and to describe supportiveness of EAS guidelines experienced by Dutch physicians.Methods Questionnaires to all Dutch health care institutions in 2005. Questionnaire to sample of Dutch clinical specialists and nursing home physicians.Results In most health care institutions, physicians (79%), ethics committees (79%), board of directors (64%) and nurses (61%) were involved in the development of guidelines. The Euthanasia Act and national guidelines were the most frequently reported sources for the development (73% and 71%, respectively). Not all institutions disseminated their written EAS policy statements and practice guidelines on medical end-of-life decisions to all relevant parties. Dutch physicians who reported the presence of a written guideline for EAS in their institution, felt supported by it in their decision-making after a patient's request for EAS.Conclusions It is recommended that more health care institutions pay attention to the dissemination of their policy statements and practice guidelines to relevant parties. This will only lead to improvement in medical practice if this is accompanied by efforts to also stimulate the use of guidelines in practice.

Keywords: End-of-life; care; End-of-life; decisions; Institutional; practice; guidelines; Quality; of; care; Institutional; policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168-8510(09)00259-0
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:94:y:2010:i:3:p:230-238

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().