Doctors and Nurses Are Pretty Good at Predicting ICU Mortality and Post-ICU Outcomes

Prognostic accuracy was best when nurses and doctors agreed and felt confident in their predictions about intensive care unit patients.

Critical care physicians regularly guide surrogate decision makers in goals-of-care discussions, often prognosticating about chances of patient survival and quality of life after intensive care unit (ICU) stays. Many of us have wondered how good we are at predicting these outcomes. Investigators enrolled 47 physicians and 128 nurses from five ICUs (with 303 unique patients) and asked them to predict six outcomes: survival to discharge; survival at 6 months; return to prehospital residence, ambulation, toileting; and cognitive function at 6 months. Clinicians also were asked to rate their level of confidence in each prediction.

In general, physicians' and nurses' predictions had fair-to-moderate correlation and were better than chance, althou…

Reviewing Author

Patricia Kritek, MD

Disclosures

Editorial BoardsATS Scholar

Patricia Kritek, MD

Disclosures

Editorial BoardsATS Scholar

Doctors and Nurses Are Pretty Good at Predicting ICU Mortality and Post-ICU Outcomes

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Reviewing Author