Advance Care Planning for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities

As people live longer, they become more likely to die from prolonged, incurable, chronic illnesses occurring more frequently in old age. This study explores the usefulness, quality, and reliability of documented advance care planning interviews to determine the decision-making capacity of persons with intellectual disabilities (IDs). A volunteer sample of 60 persons rated the capacity to consent to treatment of four persons deciding on two end-of-life decisions. Sensitivity, specificity, and percent agreement were calculated. Interrater reliability was assessed using Fleiss’ &kgr; and Krippendorff’s &agr;. A Yates’ corrected &khgr;2 was used to analyze differences in ratings between groups of raters. The sensitivity value was 62%; the specificity value was 95%. The percent agreement for all participants was 70%, Fleiss’ &kgr; was 0.396, and Krippendorff’s &agr; was 0.395. Of the participants, 72 found documented advance care planning discussions useful for diagnosing the decision-making capacity of people with IDs. The documented interviews helped to identify those persons with IDs who had the decision-making capacity. Documented interviews on end-of-life decisions could make a valuable contribution to fostering their self-determination in end-of-life issues.