Background: Hospitalists frequently lead family meetings with patients and family members. Shared decision making employed during family meetings is believed to foster mutual understanding of its participants, including understanding of prognosis. However, this assumption has not been empirically assessed. Methods: We performed a secondary analysis of data from a trial of a decision support tool [...]

Background: Clinicians face substantial challenges in limiting life-prolonging interventions (e.g., ICU admission, life-sustaining treatments, invasive procedures) near the end of life, even when they judge these interventions to be non-beneficial [1-3]. The objective of our study was to empirically derive a descriptive framework of decision-making approaches used by clinicians to limit (i.e., withhold or withdraw) [...]