Erschienen in:
01.10.2012 | Editorial
Do physicians’ beliefs influence treatment options at the end of life?
verfasst von:
Erin K. Kross
Erschienen in:
Intensive Care Medicine
|
Ausgabe 10/2012
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Excerpt
In this issue of
Intensive Care Medicine, Schenker and colleagues present an interesting paper on the association between physicians’ beliefs and the presentation of the option of comfort care for critically ill patients [
1]. The authors present a mixed-methods study of 72 family conferences which included conversations about treatment decisions. They assess how comfort care is presented to surrogates. Comfort care was defined as withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment and/or a plan of care focused primarily on maximizing patient comfort rather than prolonging life [
1]. They analyzed audio recordings of family conferences and found a broad range of clinicians’ descriptions of comfort care. Most notably, they found that comfort care was not presented as an option in 44 % of these conferences, despite an overall inpatient mortality of 72 % in their cohort. …