Affiliation:
1. Wayne State University
Abstract
The communicative purpose of an end-of-life discussion is to change the goals of treatment for a terminal patient from therapeutic to comfort care. In this study, the authors present a comparative discourse analysis of end-of-life discussions that reached a consensus to change the goals of treatment and discussions that did not. They found that the presentation of medical information was subtly different across these discussions: Decision-making discussions were based on a consistent accumulation of negative evidence, whereas non—decision-making discussions were inconsistent in this respect, including mention of positive rather than negative outcomes of medical problems, discussion of possible treatment options, and mitigating summary statements. The authors note that end-of-life discussions with these specific features do not progress to a decision to change the goals of treatment to comfort care.
Subject
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Reference37 articles.
1. Families looking back: One year after discussion of withdrawal or withholding of life-sustaining support
2. Half the families of intensive care unit patients experience inadequate communication with physicians
3. Barton, E. (2006). Trajectories of alignment and the situated ethics of end-of-life discussions in American medicine. In M. Gotti and F. Salager-Meyer (Eds.), Advances in Medical Discourse: Oral and Written Contexts (pp. 23-42). Bern: Peter Lang.
Cited by
13 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献