Doctors' knowledge of the law on withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining medical treatment

In reply: General medicine was one of eight specialties included at the pilot stage of our research. However, the response rate of general physicians was only 6% — the lowest of all specialties. We considered this rate to reflect a relative lack of interest in the topic, perhaps because end-of-life decision making is only part of the more diverse practice of general physicians. Our method for determining which specialties to survey also included a literature review, and asking doctors who pretested the survey instrument which specialties were most involved in end-of-life decision making. After extensive discussion within the research team, general physicians were removed from the main study.