Background: Effective communication between health-care providers, patients and their families is a key aspect of the discussion surrounding a patient’s goals of care.  One crucial part of this process is reaching a shared understanding of how the patient views their own quality of life.   The objective of this study was to characterize factors patients and [...]

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) [...]

Background: The Center for Health Evaluations, Education, Research and Engagement (CHEVERE) study is a research program at Lincoln Hospital designed to explore the cultural, social and psychological factors that either facilitate or serve as barriers to behavioral change in the South Bronx community. The focus of our Phase II, non-blinded, prospective study is to develop [...]