Decisions about life-sustaining treatment. Impact of physicians' behaviors on the family

Title

Decisions about life-sustaining treatment. Impact of physicians' behaviors on the family

Creator

Tilden VP; Tolle SW; Garland MJ; Nelson CA

Publisher

Archives Of Internal Medicine

Date

1995

Subject

Humans; Consensus; Withholding Treatment; Communication; Life Support Care; Physician's Role; Nurse's Role; Professional-Patient Relations; Disclosure; Empirical Approach; P.H.S.; Professional Patient Relationship; Research Support; U.S. Gov't; Death and Euthanasia; Interviews; decision making; Family/psychology; Practice Guidelines

Description

BACKGROUND: Despite the growing availability of advance directives, most patients in the intensive care unit lack written directives, and, therefore, consultation with families about treatment decisions remains the rule. In the context of decision making about withdrawing life-sustaining treatments, we investigated which physician and nurse behaviors families find supportive and which behaviors increase the family's burden. METHODS: We conducted intensive 1- to 2-hour-long individual interviews using a semistructured interview protocol with 32 family members of patients without advance directives whose deaths followed a stay in the intensive care unit and withdrawal of treatment. We analyzed more than 700 pages of verbatim interview data using content analysis techniques and achieved more than 90% interrater agreement on data codes. RESULTS: Themes emerged as families identified selected physician and nursing behaviors as helpful: encouraging advanced planning, timely communication, clarification of families' roles, facilitating family consensus, and accommodating family's grief. Behaviors that made families feel excluded or increased their burden included postponing discussions about treatment withdrawal, delaying withdrawal once scheduled, placing the full burden of decision making on one person, withdrawing from the family, and defining death as a failure. CONCLUSIONS: Study findings provide an increased understanding of the unmet needs of families and serve to guide physicians and nurses in reducing actions that increase families' burdens as they participate in treatment withdrawal decisions.
1995

Rights

Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).

Type

Journal Article

Citation List Month

Backlog

Citation

Tilden VP; Tolle SW; Garland MJ; Nelson CA, “Decisions about life-sustaining treatment. Impact of physicians' behaviors on the family,” Pediatric Palliative Care Library, accessed April 24, 2024, https://pedpalascnetlibrary.omeka.net/items/show/12368.