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 ...

Modern life-sustaining therapy often succeeds in postponing death but may be ineffective at restoring health. Decisions that influence the time and circumstances of an individual's death are now common and require an ...

OBJECTIVE: Would increasing the documentation of advance directives (ADs) lead to a reduction in resource utilization? We examined this question by conducting three secondary analyses: (1) we tested for a change in ...

Modern life-sustaining therapy often succeeds in postponing death but may be ineffective at restoring health. Decisions that influence the time and circumstances of an individual's death are now common and require an ...