Recognising and managing dying patients in the acute hospital setting: can we do better?

Bharathy Gunasekaran*, Caroline Scott, Kathryn Ducharlet, David Marco, Imogen Mitchell, Jennifer Weil

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Healthcare professionals have limited formal end-of-life care training despite the large proportion of hospital deaths. A retrospective review of 201 acute hospital deaths revealed 166 (82.6%) had documentation to suggest the patient was dying but this was performed late with a median time between documentation and death of 0.84 days. Furthermore, 132 (66%) patients received an intervention in the final 48 h of life. This highlights the need to improve the recognition and management of dying patients in acute hospitals.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)119-122
Number of pages4
JournalInternal Medicine Journal
Volume49
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2019
Externally publishedYes

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