11/20/2013 – A Misunderstood Directive

Dr. Michael Rothberg, vice chair for research in the Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and colleagues in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts have written a new paper on little known, poorly understood medical directives. It is a small study of 16 health care proxies for patients with advanced dementia — largely their adult children, and some nieces and nephews.

The key findings? Often, proxies are confused about how “do not hospitalize” orders work. Several proxies believed, mistakenly, that a such an order was equivalent to a request to withhold medical intervention altogether.

Read the full article at The New York Times.