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Surrogate decision-makers (“surrogates”) and physicians of incapacitated patients have different views of prognosis and how it should be communicated, but this has not been investigated in neurocritically ill patients. We examined surrogates’ communication preferences and physicians’ practices during the outcome prognostication for critically ill traumatic brain injury (ciTBI) patients in two level-1 trauma centers and seven academic medical centers in the USA.

We used qualitative content analysis and descriptive statistics of transcribed interviews to identify themes in surrogates (n = 16) and physicians (n = 20).

The majority of surrogates (82%) preferred numeric estimates describing the patient’s prognosis, as they felt it would increase prognostic certainty, and limit the uncertainty perceived …