No Benefit from Palliative Care Meetings for Families of Patients with Prolonged Intensive Care Unit Stays

Many patients with prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) hospitalizations die within 1 year of ICU admission, and most require institutional care after hospital discharge. Discussions with patients and families about prognosis and overall goals are essential in these cases. To assess the benefit of palliative care collaboration, investigators randomized 256 critically ill patients (with 365 family-surrogate decision-makers) to at least two palliative care–led support and informational meetings (intervention) or to usual care (e.g., routine meetings with ICU clinicians). All patients were mechanically ventilated for at least 7 days and were not expected to be weaned within 72 hours.

The first palliative care–led meeting occurred after 7 days of…