1. Impact of advance directives on the variability between intensivists in the decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment
- Author
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Margot Smirdec, Mercé Jourdain, Virginie Guastella, Céline Lambert, Jean-Christophe Richard, Laurent Argaud, Samir Jaber, Kada Klouche, Anne Medard, Jean Reignier, Jean-Philippe Rigaud, Jean-Marc Doise, Russell Chabanne, Bertrand Souweine, Jeremy Bourenne, Julie Delmas, Pierre-Marie Bertrand, Philippe Verdier, Jean-Pierre Quenot, Cecile Aubron, Nathanael Eisenmann, Pierre Asfar, Alexandre Fratani, Jean Dellamonica, Nicolas Terzi, Jean-Michel Constantin, Axelle Van Lander, Renaud Guerin, Bruno Pereira, and Alexandre Lautrette
- Subjects
Advance directives ,Decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment ,ICU ,Medical emergencies. Critical care. Intensive care. First aid ,RC86-88.9 - Abstract
Abstract Background There is wide variability between intensivists in the decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment (DFLST). Advance directives (ADs) allow patients to communicate their end-of-life wishes to physicians. We assessed whether ADs reduced variability in DFLSTs between intensivists. Methods We conducted a multicenter, prospective, simulation study. Eight patients expressed their wishes in ADs after being informed about DFLSTs by an intensivist-investigator. The participating intensivists answered ten questions about the DFLSTs of each patient in two scenarios, referring to patients’ characteristics without ADs (round 1) and then with (round 2). DFLST score ranged from 0 (no-DFLST) to 10 (DFLST for all questions). The main outcome was variability in DFLSTs between intensivists, expressed as relative standard deviation (RSD). Results A total of 19,680 decisions made by 123 intensivists from 27 ICUs were analyzed. The DFLST score was higher with ADs than without (6.02 95% CI [5.85; 6.19] vs 4.92 95% CI [4.75; 5.10], p
- Published
- 2020
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