[The law number 2005-370 of April 22, 2005 concerning the patients' rights at the end-of-life: improvement of the withholding and withdrawing treatment decision-making process by an educational program. A monocenter prospective and retrospective pilot study].

Objective: To assess the impact of an educational program on the quality of the end-of-life decision (EOLD).

Methods: Prospective study for 3 months in a surgical Intensive Care Unit (ICU) involving: staff training conferences and guidelines for documenting level-of-care staff conference; audit before and at 3 months; analysis of records for deceased patients. The main outcome measures the proportion of treatment-limitation in dying ICU patients; and the secondary outcomes the decision-making process and nurses' satisfaction.

Evolution of requests to hasten death among patients managed by palliative care teams in France: a multicentre cross-sectional survey (DemandE).

Background: Strongly marked ideological positions on the impact of palliative care and limited hard data plague the debate on physician-assisted death.

Methods: A national cross-sectional study on the requests to hasten death (RHD) was conducted among 789 French palliative care organisations. Data were collected for all patients with RHD encountered during year 2010.