The “very old intensive care patients”(abbreviated to VOPs; greater than 80 years old) are
probably the fastest expanding subgroup of all intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Up until …

The jurors identified numerous problems with end of life in the ICU including variability in
practice, inadequate predictive models for death, elusive knowledge of patient preferences …

Importance Seriously ill hospitalized patients have identified communication and decision
making about goals of care as high priorities for quality improvement in end-of-life care …

Context Talking about death can be difficult. Without evidence that end-of-life discussions
improve patient outcomes, physicians must balance their desire to honor patient autonomy …

Background Empirical data about end-of-life decision-making practices are scarce. We
aimed to investigate frequency and characteristics of end-of-life decision-making practices in …

Culture fundamentally shapes how individuals make meaning out of illness, suffering, and
dying. With increasing diversity in the United States, encounters between patients and …

BACKGROUND: Guidelines recommend advanced care planning for terminally ill patients
with< 1 year to live. Few data are available regarding when physicians and their terminally ill …

A reliable and valid measure of the quality of the dying experience would help clinicians and
researchers improve care for dying patients. To describe the validity of an instrument …

Objective To identify barriers to and enablers of advance care planning (ACP) perceived by
physicians and other health professionals in primary care. Design Cross-sectional, self …

Patients and their families struggle with myriad choices concerning medical treatments that
frequently precede death. Advance directives have been proposed as a tool to facilitate end …