Time Limited Trials to Reduce Non-Beneficial Intensive Care Unit Treatments

NCT04181294 NA COMPLETED

Overutilization of intensive care unit (ICU) treatments among patients with advanced medical illnesses and poor prognosis places them at risk for prolonged suffering with minimal anticipated benefit. Improving communication and shared decision-making between providers and patients/family members represents an opportunity to reduce potentially non-beneficial treatments. Time limited trials (TLTs) are agreements between clinicians and patients/surrogate decision-makers to use medical therapies over a defined period of time to observe if patients improve or deteriorate according to agreed-upon clinical outcomes. The objective of this project is to examine whether a quality improvement intervention that uses protocoled time limited trials as the default ICU communication/care planning strategy for patients with advanced medical illnesses will decrease the duration and intensity of non-beneficial ICU treatments without changing hospital mortality.

Details

Lead sponsor	Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Phase	NA
Status	COMPLETED
Enrolment	209
Start date	Tue Aug 01 2017 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
Completion	Tue Dec 31 2019 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Conditions

• Critical Illness
• Communication

Interventions

• Family meetings using time limited trials as default ICU communication and care planning approach
• Usual practice

Countries

United States