Advance directives of patient’s will: A study among resident physicians

Introduction: The advance directives of the patient's will are a tool that prioritizes the will, intention and discernment of the patient, it was conducted in the form of a document that expresses the types of treatments that the individual wishes to receive in the instant that he or she is not able to make their own decisions anymore. Objective: To investigate the level of agreement of resident physicians in a public hospital, about the Resolution 1995/2012 of the Federal Council of Medicine of Brazil which deals with Advance Directives. Methods: This is a descriptive and exploratory study with a quantitative approach. To collect data, an adapted questionnaire containing socio-demographic questions and also questions about the subject was used, using the Likert scale. It was performed a descriptive and inferential statistical analysis by the Chi square adherence test. Results: It was found that about 98% of the participants fully or partly agree to respect the wishes of the patients or their representatives, if they are unable to express themselves. However, 73% of participants reported to disregard the wishes of the patient if they contravene the Medical Ethics Code and 76.9% of physicians agree that advance directives should be recorded in the medical record. It is noteworthy that expressed favorable that the wishes of the patient prevails over the wishes of the family. Conclusion: It is noticed that the physicians participating in the research, understand and agree with the assumptions of Resolution 1995/2012 of the Federal Council of Medicine of Brazil, which guides as the Advance Directives, considering it adequate and appropriate to direct medical action against dilemmas and conflictive situations that commonly arise in the management of patients in terminal condition.   DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3823/235