6/24/2014 – When Advance Directives Are Ignored

Health care professionals, ethicists and advocates continually urge older people to document their preferences about end-of-life medical decisions, and a growing proportion do. A recent large national study, tracking more than 6,000 people over age 60 who died between 2000 and 2010, found that the proportion with advance directives climbed to 72 percent from 47 percent.

But how much does it matter? How often are people’s advance directives ignored or overridden? Do they really ensure that the elderly get the care they want or ward off procedures they don’t?

Read the full article at The New York Times.