Consultatie van andere artsen bij euthanasieverzoeken en andere beslissingen aan het levenseinde van patiënten.

This research proposal is a request for funding of a 4th PhD-student year for Yanna Van Wesemael. The latter is making her PhD-dissertation within the framework of the IWT project 'Monitoring the quality of end-of-life care in Flanders' (IWT323). as Yanna was only employed on the project from the start of the second project year (replacement of Kathleen Van Hulle), only three years of her PhD trajectory can be financed within this IWT project. With this proposal we therefore ask for funding for the staff costs of one year as a PhD-student, inorder to complete the planned articles and the dissertation. An important part of the data collection of the study has already been conducted or is currently being conducted: 1) Mail Survey on the activities of all LEIFphysicians (N=132) (i.e. physicians offering consult to treating physicians on eg euthanasia). A part of the results of this survey was incorporated into an article submitted to an international journal; two other articles based on this data collection are in preparation. 2) March 2009 will be the start of a large-scale mail survey in 3000 Belgian physicians about their attitudes and experiences regarding euthanasia requests, end-of-life decisions, and the consultation of colleague physicians in authanasia. All preparations, including a positive advice of the ethical committee of the University Hospital, for this study have been made and the data are expected to be ready for analysis in autumn 2009. Since the data will already have been collected, only staff costs are requested for the 4th PhD-student year in order to complete the articles and the dissertation.