Page 2 - 20191216_ViewsOnConsultationDocumentEOLCare

1. Public education and advocacy

There is limited public awareness on the concept of EoLC and thus an urgent need to reinforce
related public education and advocacy. Further efforts are required to empower individuals to
recognise different options for spending the last stages of their lives with quality and dignity.

1.1. High public acceptance on advance directives given adequate guidance

Consultation Question 1

Do you think that the public at large is ready to accept the concept of advance
directives?

Our Hong Kong Foundation [✔] Agree [ ] Disagree

We agree that the general public welcomes the concept of advance directives (ADs). This has
consistently been reflected in several research papers published by academics.

A recent study by The Nethersole School of Nursing at The Chinese University of Hong Kong
(CUHK) and the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of
Hong Kong revealed that 80.2% of those who had heard about AD had made or intended to make
ADs (Chan et al., 2019).

In 2017, the Food and Health Bureau commissioned the CUHK Jockey Club School of Public
Health and Primary Care and CUHK Jockey Club Institute of Ageing to understand the extent of
knowledge, attitudes and preferences of ADs and related EoLC concepts. The report presented
similar results: 60.9% of participants would make their own ADs were they to be legislated
(Chung et al., 2017).

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust launched the three-year “Jockey Club End-of-Life
Community Care Project” (JCECC) in 2015. A report published on the “Community-Wide
Survey on End-of-Life Care in Hong Kong 2016” completed as part of this projects reported that
74.4% of interviewees would choose to sign an AD (JCECC, 2016).

The positive results observed in the abovementioned studies, however, were observed only when
additional explanations of key concepts were provided to guide interviewees’ responses, further

2