Recognizing difficult trade-offs: values and treatment preferences for end-of-life care in a multi-site survey of adult patients in family practices

Table 2 Correlations between different values pertaining to decisions about life-sustaining treatments

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i
a) How important is it that I be comfortable and suffer as little as possible? (shorten)	1.00	0.11 0.0022	0.08↓ 0.0364	0.24↑ <.0001	0.28↑ <.0001	0.09↑ 0.0130	−0.04↓ 0.2882	0.05 0.1453	0.12 0.0011
b) How important is it that I have more time with my family? (prolong)		1.00	0.64↑ <.0001	−0.03↓ 0.3449	−0.08↓ 0.0381	0.07 0.0521	0.37 <.0001	0.43 <.0001	0.09↓ 0.0129
c) How important is it that I live as long as possible? (prolong)			1.00	0.02↓ 0.5183	−0.12↓ 0.0009	0.10↓ 0.0066	0.52↑ <.0001	0.43 <.0001	0.13↓ 0.0003
d) How important is it that I avoid being attached to machines and tubes? (shorten)				1.00	0.46↑ <.0001	0.16↑ <.0001	−0.03↓ 0.4943	0.02 0.5562	0.29↑ <.0001
e) How important is it that my death is not prolonged? (shorten)					1.00	0.19↑ <.0001	−0.14↓ 0.0002	0.03 0.4868	0.19↑ <.0001
f) How important is a belief that nature should be allowed to take its course? (shorten)						1.00	0.18 <.0001	0.15↓ <.0001	0.14↑ 0.0002
g) How important is the belief that life should be preserved? (prolong)							1.00	0.38 <.0001	0.04↓ 0.3300
h) How important is it that I respect the wishes of other family members regarding my care? (neutral)								1.00	0.17 <.0001
i) How important is it that I avoid hospitalization? (neutral)									1.00

Association between value statements and likely influence on length of life indicated in brackets (prolong, shorten, neutral)
A priori, correlations indicated ↑ were expected to be strongly positive and correlations indicated ↓ were expected to be strongly negative
P values are written under correlation coefficient

ISSN: 1472-6947