Differences in end-of-life care in the ICU across patients cared for by medicine, surgery, neurology, and neurosurgery physicians.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Some of the challenges in the delivery of high-quality end-of-life care in the ICU include the variability in the characteristics of patients with certain illnesses and the practice of critical care by different specialties.

Methods

We examined whether ICU attending specialty was associated with quality of end-of-life care by using data from a clustered randomized trial of 14 hospitals. Patients died in the ICU or within 30 h of transfer and were categorized by specialty of the attending physician at time of death (medicine, surgery, neurology, or neurosurgery). Outcomes included family ratings of satisfaction, family and nurse ratings of quality of dying, and documentation of palliative care in medical records. Associations were tested using multipredictor regres

SUBMITTER: Kross EK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3913300 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature