[Decision-making and end of life care]. / Les déclarations de volontés en fin de vie. De la terminologie juridique à la communication médecin généraliste/patient.

Taboos surrounding the end of life and death slowly diminish. People talk more and more about when and how they want or do not want to die, and of what will become of their body after their passing. General practitioners usually accompany their patients in illness and health, but also when death comes near. It is expected from them that, within their relationship to their patients, they create the opportunity to address the patients' last wishes and possibly to formalize them. Three laws as well as the Deontology Code of the Medical Order mention the issue of the last wishes. What comes out is that for the general practitioner, the situation is not always transparent. This article seeks to clarify the definitions (juridical), their perceptions and respect. Furthermore, a proposal that is fully in the spirit of the law is made to simplify current procedures relating to anticipated statements about end of life's wishes.

[Decision-making processes and medical care at the end of life]. / Processus décisionnels et soins médicaux en fin de vie.

The Federal Authority, the Ministry of Public Health and Environment, charged the Ghent University and the Brussels Free University to produce a continuous recording tool of data's concerning the decision-making processes and the medical care at the end of life, after defining the present state of the art. This tool is built up from a glossary and a questionnaire made up of closed questions with a prospective part and a retrospective part, and leaving the possibility of comments. This questionnaire, first submit to experts and two ethic committees, was sent anonymously to a broad sample of doctors of which 193 answered. This study brings out important information on the application of the laws on palliative care, on the rights of the patient and on euthanasia; it would be advisable to organise in the future a further systematic recording of the end of life conditions throughout a standardized questionnaire whose first version is presented here.