Can ‘living wills’ tie a surgeon’s hands? UW study indicates so

High-risk surgeons can get caught in a “Catch-22” when trying to save a life: what if the patient doesn?t want extraordinary measures taken to keep living? A new study from a UW-Madison surgical professor suggests advance directives, or “living wills,” don?t work in the surgical suite. Dr. Margaret “Gretchen” Schwarze, assistant professor of surgery at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, discovered that only 50 percent of surgeons who do high-risk operations discuss advance directives with their patients before surgery.