Patients and their families often value the avoidance of invasive or overly aggressive life-sustaining measures when they are at the end of life. However, many dying patients receive aggressive life-sustaining therapies, in part due to clinicians’ failures to elicit patients’ preferences and to provide recommendations.
Conditions: End of life
Treatments: Life support interventions
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Sources
- Downar J, et al. Nonbeneficial treatment Canada: definitions, causes, and potential solutions from the perspective of healthcare practitioners*. Crit Care Med. 2015 Feb;43(2):270-81. (PubMed)
- Myburgh J, et al. End-of-life care in the intensive care unit: Report from the Task Force of World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine. J Crit Care. 2016 Aug;34:125-30. (PubMed)