‘Death is not a taboo’: three-quarters of respondents to Hong Kong survey willing to set up advance medical directives
- Poll finds 74.4 per cent of respondents support setting up document, while nearly half back idea of relatives dying at home
- Lawmakers are scrutinising bill to give legal status to documents for end-of-life care
About three-quarters of Hongkongers are willing to set up advance medical directives to reject certain treatments if they are dying, a survey has found, as lawmakers scrutinise a proposed bill to give legal status to such documents.
The survey results released on Tuesday also found that nearly half of the respondents backed the idea of their family members dying at home.
“Death is not a taboo for Hongkongers. They are willing to listen about, discuss and draft medical directives or advance care planning,” said Professor Amy Chow Yin-man, project director of the Jockey Club End-of-Life Community Care Project, which organised the survey.
The survey, which focused on the public’s understanding of local end-of-life care, interviewed 1,506 adults by phone between July and October last year.
The University of Hong Kong’s faculty of social sciences, a partner of the Jockey Club project, commissioned a research firm to carry out the survey.
Launched in 2016, the 10-year project aims to improve the quality of end-of-life care in Hong Kong.
While 75.3 per cent of respondents had not heard of advance directives before, about 70 per cent of them said they were willing to set them up after they were provided with an explanation of what they were.