Resource Page for Critical Care End-of-Life Issues
PDFs and Comprehensive Bibliography
This bibliography and resource materials were devised by the Promoting Excellence Critical Care Workgroup to be a resource for clinicians, researchers, and administrators working to improve end-of-life care in the ICU. It includes a bibliography of books, review articles, and research articles concerning end-of-life care in the ICU setting. For those articles that are listed and abstracted on the National Library of Medicine database PubMed, links are available from the article titles to their PubMed abstract. The Web site also includes some example protocols, order forms, and clinical pathways that have been developed at a number of U.S. hospitals with the goal of improving care to patients in the ICU. These documents are downloadable in PDF format. In addition, there is a downloadable Endnote database that contains references for all books and articles referenced on this page.
Details of Search Methods
The majority of these articles were collected by performing the following PubMed searches:
- (mechanical ventilation, critical care, or intensive care) and (end-of-life or palliative care)
- futility and (critical care, intensive care, or end-of-life)
- surrogate decision making
- (culture, religion, race or ethnicity) and (intensive care or end-of-life)
After doing these broad searches, more specific searches were done on the categories that lacked numerous articles, such as staff support, ethics, legal and licensure and pain and symptoms. These categories were crosses with search terms such as end-of-life and intensive care. Some additional articles were identified from bibliographies of articles found through the searches above. Additional articles were also provided by RWJF ICU End-of-Life Work Group members.
A. Annotated Bibliography from 2000-2001
By Judith E. Nelson, MD, JD
B. List of Reviews and Overviews
C. List of Peer-reviewed Research Articles by Category
D. Curricula
E. ICU Policies and Clinical Pathways
1. Withdrawal of life sustaining treatments
i. University of California, San Francisco General Hospital - Guidelines for Withdrawal of Mechanical Ventilation/Life Support
PDF 921 KB
and for Pharmacologic Intervention during Termination of Ventilator Support
PDF 848 KB
ii. The Johns Hopkins Medical Nursing Service - Procedure for Withdrawal of Life Support in the MICU/MCP
PDF 172 KB
iii. Saint Thomas Hospital, Vanderbilt - Terminal Weaning from Ventilator Protocol
PDF 21 KB
2. DNR Policies
i. Communication of Inpatient DNR and Limited Therapy Orders
3. Pain assessment and management
i. Johns Hopkins Hospital Interdisciplinary Clinical Practice Manual - Pain, Assessment and Management
PDF 238 KB
F. ICU Order Forms
a. Withdrawal of life sustaining treatments
i. Harborview Medical Center - UW Medical Center - Comfort Care Orders for the Withdrawal of Life Support in the ICU
ii. Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre - Withdrawal of Life Support Checklist
PDF 102 KB
iii. Johns Hopkins Hospital - Withdrawal of Life Support
PDF 159 KB
iv. Saint Thomas Hospital, Vanderbilt - Physician Order Sheet for Terminal Weaning from Ventilator
PDF 15 KB
b. DNR order forms
i. Doctor's Order to Limit Inpatient Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
ii. San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center - Physician's Orders
PDF 881 KB
iii. Harborview Medical Center - UW Medical Center - Do Not Attempt Resuscitation Order
iv. Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre - Physician Orders for the Level of Medical Treatment
PDF 95 KB
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Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care was a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation dedicated to long-term changes in health care institutions to substantially improve care for dying people and their families. |