Published in:
01-01-2006 | Editorial
Transcending the silos: toward an interdisciplinary approach to end-of-life care in the ICU
Authors:
J. Randall Curtis, Sarah E. Shannon
Published in:
Intensive Care Medicine
|
Issue 1/2006
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Excerpt
Critical care nurses play a pivotal role in end-of-life care in the ICU. They are intimately involved at all stages of this care, are the clinicians who spend the most time at the bedside and play key roles in communicating with families [
1,
2,
3]. Prior research with family members after the death of a loved one in the ICU shows that families rate nurses’ skill at communication as one of the most important clinical skills of ICU clinicians [
4,
5]. There are also data from the U.S. that end-of-life care in the ICU is an area where nurse-physician disagreement is common [
6,
7,
8]. A study from France also suggests physicians and nurses have very different perceptions of end-of-life care in the ICU [
9]. In a qualitative analysis, critical care nurses expressed extreme frustration about their limited role in the management of patients at the end of life, using words like “at my institution, doctors beat patients that God has called” [
10]. …
