Citation

Winter L, Parks SM. J. Health Psychol. 2012; 17(2): 179-188.

Affiliation

Thomas Jefferson University, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1359105311414956

PMID

21788306

Abstract

Most patients are decisionally incapacitated at the end of life, leaving final treatment decisions to proxies, whose substituted judgment is often inaccurate. We investigated the reluctance to burden others (RBO), a commonly cited patient value, as a possible source of proxy inaccuracy. In a sample of 202 elders and their proxies, elders responded to three burden-related questions and the Life-prolonging Treatment Preferences Questionnaire. Proxies used substituted judgment to respond to the same questions. Although RBO predicted treatment preferences for both elders and proxies, elders rated RBO significantly more important than did proxies. In addition, larger elder-proxy differences in RBO were associated with more inaccurate substituted judgment.

Language: en