[Experiences of Austrian nursing staff in dealing with advance directives]

Advance directive is a contemporary issue because of accentuation of patients' autonomy and the increasing medical progress. But problems arise in drafting an advance directive as well as in realisation of advance directives in institutions. The duties and the influence of nursing in this context are hardly an object of scientific investigations. This article first describes empirically the role of nurses in connection with advance directives.

AIM of this study is the description of nurses' experiences in connection with advance directives.

A descriptive-explorative cross-section design was used for this study. Data were recorded by means of a semi-structured questionnaire. This questionnaire was handed out to 266 nurses working at an Austrian university hospital.

On the part of nurses there is a great insecurity with concurrent existence of sufficient theoretical professional knowledge and missing structures of the part of organisation. Because of these situations some interdisciplinary conflicts arise in connection with realisation of advanced directives.

To avoid conflicts and to improve the handling and realisation of advance directives in practice it is recommendable to establish clinical ethical consultation. The tasks of the clinical ethical consultation are the creation and implementation of ethical directives in the institution, the realisation of individual case discussions and the ethical education of the affected health care professionals.