BACKGROUND: Treatment decisions should be based on patients' goals of care to provide an ethical, patient-centered framework for decision-making. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to improve our understanding about how patients' and surrogates' goals of care are communicated and interpreted in an MICU. METHODS: One hundred patients admitted to an MICU, or their surrogates, responded to an open-ended question about goals of care for their hospitalization followed by a closed-ended question regarding their most important goal of care. Investigators interpreted participants' open-ended responses and compared these interpretations with participants' closed-ended, most-important-goal selections. RESULTS: Investigators' interpretations of participants' open-ended goals of care responses matched participants' closed-ended most important goal of care in only 28 of 100 cases. However, there was good inter-rater reliability between investigators in their interpretation of participants' open-ended responses, with agreement in 78 of 100 cases. CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians should be cautious in interpreting patients' or surrogates' responses to open-ended questions about goals of care. A shared understanding of goals of care may be facilitated by alternating open-ended and closed-ended questions to clarify patients' or surrogates' responses.
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science
1
3%
Other
6
17%
Unknown
7
19%
Attention Score in Context
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 October 2015.
All research outputs
#21,635,466
of 27,370,655 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing
#500
of 991 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#209,980
of 258,099 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing
#5
of 19 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,370,655 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 18th percentile – i.e., 18% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 991 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 2.3. This one is in the 30th percentile – i.e., 30% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 258,099 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 17th percentile – i.e., 17% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 19 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 52% of its contemporaries.
