The recently enacted Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 has, for the first time, introduced a legislative framework for the execution, recognition and enforcement of Advance Directives in Ireland. An Advanced Directive can be defined as a statement, made by a person with mental capacity, indicating that person’s healthcare preferences in the event that the person should, in future, lose the capacity to make contemporaneous healthcare decisions. In order to effectively care for their patients, physicians must be aware of the law relating to Advance Directives. Ignorance of the law, or indifference towards Advance Directives in general, could compromise patient care and expose physicians to legal liability. In order to assess whether Irish physicians are prepared for the implications the aforementioned legislation will have for clinical practice, this research project proposes to analyse their knowledge of the law relating to, and their attitudes towards, Advance Directives. The aforementioned Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 re-iterates the legislative prohibition on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Ireland. However, public debate on these controversial issues has repeatedly been re-ignited in recent years by a series of emotive court cases. To date, no study of the attitudes of Irish physicians towards Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide has been undertaken. This is a significant gap in the published literature. By analysing Irish physicians’ attitudes towards Advance Directives, Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, this project will contribute to the public debate about the future direction of legislative policy concerning Advance Care Planning and End-of-Life issues.
