Development of a Questionnaire to Determine Incidence and Attitudes to “Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking”:

Background“Voluntary stopping of eating and drinking” (VSED) is an option to hasten death at the end of life. There are no data available about incidence of either the explicit VSED or implicit (V)SED nor information about experiences and attitudes of health professionals about VSED in Switzerland.AimsTo develop, test, and translate a standardized questionnaire that measures the incidence of VSED, and physicians’ and nurses’ experiences about explicit VSED and implicit (V)SED.MethodsThe development of the questionnaire was based on a systematic search, which were updated in 2016. The questionnaire was tested by palliative care specialists using standard pretest and content validity index (CVI). Subsequently, a forward/backward translation was made.ResultsThe questionnaire includes 38 items. Feedback of 15 participants in the standard pretest were positive in terms of intelligibility with an average time of 28 minutes. After adjustment, 27 experts validated the items in two rounds. The questionnaire achiev...