BACKGROUND: Serious illness often causes economic hardship for patients' families. However, it is not known whether this hardship is associated with a preference for the goal of care to focus on maximizing comfort instead ...

BACKGROUND: Medical treatment decisions should be based on the preferences of informed patients or their proxies and on the expected outcomes of treatment. Because seriously ill patients are at risk for cardiac arrest, examination ...

CONTEXT: Previous studies have documented that cancer patients tend to overestimate the probability of long-term survival. If patient preferences about the trade-offs between the risks and benefits associated with alternative ...

OBJECTIVES: To describe functional outcomes of seriously III patients who survived 2 months after in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and to identify patient and clinical characteristics associated with ...

BACKGROUND: Physicians are frequently unaware of patient preferences for end-of-life care. Identifying and exploring barriers to patient-physician communication about end-of-life issues may help guide physicians and ...

CONTEXT: The epidemiology of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders for hospitalized patients has been reported, but little is known about factors associated with the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). OBJECTIVE: To identify ...

BACKGROUND: Patient age may influence decisions to withhold life-sustaining treatments, independent of patients' preferences for or ability to benefit from such treatments. Controversy exists about the appropriateness of ...

BACKGROUND: Alleviating the problems faced by dying persons and their families has drawn substantial public attention, but little is known about the experience of dying. OBJECTIVE: To characterize the experience of dying ...