The Relationship between Some Beliefs Held by Physicians and their Life-Prolonging Decisions

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Abstract
A Guttman scale was developed to elicit physicians' tendencies in regard to life-prolonging decisions. The great majority (79.4%) of the 92 physicians in the sample favored withdrawing treatment from terminally ill patients in at least two out of three imaginary situations. A comparison of the sample's life-prolonging decisions by their beliefs in God and afterlife yielded no significant differences. Comparison of the sample's life-prolonging decisions by their beliefs about death indicated that physicians who favored withdrawal of treatment from terminally ill patients viewed death more as a negative than as a neutral or positive phenomenon.

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