Participation of chronically ill older adults in their life-prolonging treatment decisions: Rights and opportunity

The right of the individual to participate in herl life-prolonging treatment decisions, either as a decision maker or by having her treatment wishes used as a decision-making criterion, is the result of an evolution in legal guidelines over the last two decades. Although necessary, these legal guidelines are however not sufficient to assure the individual's opportunity to participate. For the chronically ill older adult residing in a health care institution, the opportunity to participate in decisions concerning life-prolonging treatments implicitly depends on the effective communication among three key actors (the individual, her physician, and her proxy). The necessity of this communication has important implications for clinical practice and future empirical research.