Led by a team of WeCare Chair researchers, the study has analysed whether deficits in perceived dignity and self-efficacy, which impact patients’ health-related quality of life, can be considered risk factors for their wishes to hasten death. “For this study, we have used the Desire for Death Rating Scale to assess 153 patients’ desire to hasten death. These assessments were also based on the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality-of-Life Core 15-Item Palliative Questionnaire”, explains Dr Iris Crespo, one of the study’s principal investigators with Dr Cristina Monforte.
Results show that patients with a desire to hasten death showed lower perceived dignity, self-efficacy and emotional quality of life than those patients without a desire to hasten death. Dr Cristina Monforte and Dr Josep Porta, directors of the WeCare Chair, Dr Andrea Rodríguez, WeCare Chair researcher, and Dr Keith Wilson from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (Canada), have all taken part in the study.
