More on Views re: End of Life Treament

We have offered several posts regarding end of life issues, and now we wanted to let you know about a recent poll released by Pew Research, on Religion, Public Life & Policy. The poll, released on November 21, 2013, is titled Views on End-of-Life Medical Treatments.

The report contains a detailed overview and then is divided into 5 chapters, covering topics including physician-assisted suicide, morality of suicide, general views as well as individual desires on end of life treatment, proxy decisions and aging and the quality of life. The report notes a very slight increase in support for physician-assisted suicide but a bit more of an increase in support of a person’s right to end her life in certain cases. (p. 7).  The report incorporates a discussion of religions’ influences in the section on morality.

One of the many interesting statistics contained in this report is the percentages of those who have given some thought to their end of life wishes. Despite the increasing numbers of those 65 and older (Boomers):

Nearly four-in-ten U.S. adults (37%) say they have given a great deal of thought to their wishes for medical treatment at the end of their lives, and an additional 35% have given some thought to these issues. But fully a quarter of adults (27%) say they have not given very much thought or have given no thought at all to how they would like doctors and other medical professionals to handle their medical treatment at the end of their lives.

Even among Americans ages 75 and older, one-in-four say they have not given very much or any thought to their end-of-life wishes. Further, one-in-five Americans ages 75 and older (22%) say they have neither written down nor talked with someone about their wishes for medical treatment at the end of their lives. And three-in-ten of those who describe their health as fair or poor have neither written down nor talked about their wishes with anyone…. (p. 9)

Anyone who discusses end of life decision-making or advance directives needs to read this report. It has some great data for our classes.

A pdf of the report may be accessed here.