Too Soon to Give up on Advance Directives

Advance directives were the subject of a 2010 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, also the fifth anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo. So where do advance directives stand these days and how might we make better use of them? Michael Green, MD and Benjamin Levi, MD of the Penn State College of Medicine discuss the study about advance directives in an elderly population, focusing on the distinction between advance directives and advance care planning and adaptive preference formation. They offer a computer-based approach to advance directives in the April 2010 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics. (April 16, 2010)