A study, conducted by researchers at Philadelphia-based Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and published in JAMA, examines the accuracy of intensive care unit care providers' predictions of patient outcomes.
The study included 47 physicians, 128 nurses and 303 patients across five ICUs within the University of Pennsylvania Health System. The patients had been in the ICU for three to six days and needed a ventilator or medication to keep their blood pressure high enough to live. Researchers asked ICU physicians and nurses to predict patient outcomes.
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Here are five insights:
1. The accuracy of physician predictions was mixed.
2. The physicians more or less accurately predicted patients' in-hospital mortality, six-month mortality as well as six-month inability to use the toilet independently.
3. When confident, physician predictions regarding patient mortality were near perfect.
4. However, physician predictions regarding cognitive dysfunction were not as accurate as medical tests.
5. Nurses were, on average, moderately less accurate than physicians across all outcomes.
"My hope is that the results of this study will reinforce to clinicians that their predictions, while not perfect, are still likely to be helpful to the families of critically injured or ill patients who are faced with making extraordinarily difficult decisions about long-term care for their loved ones," said study senior author Scott D. Halpern, MD, PhD, director of Penn's Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center.