Nursing and physician perception of inappropriate intensive care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A multi-point survey to investigate the incidence and outcome of patients who doctors or nurses feel are unlikely to leave hospital alive from intensive care and the rate of agreement between doctors and the bedside nurse
IRAS ID
248372
Contact name
Richard Innes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Musgrove Park Hospital
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 1 days
Research summary
An investigation into the incidence of care which is deemed inappropriate within intensive care. Data from the United States and some European countries suggests that up to 10 % of patients within intensive care receive care that is deemed inappropriate or futile according to health care providers. Intensive care is a very expensive service to provide and the provision of care that is inappropriate will not benefit the patient (because they are very unlikely to survive it or have a meaningful recovery). Not only is this wasteful of resource, but the ethical conflict associated with the delivery of inappropriate care has been shown to be a leading cause of burn out amongst health care professionals. This study aims to evaluate the incidence of inappropriate care provision within intensive care units in the South West of England. Previous studies have only asked the views of medical staff so we intend to ask both medical and nursing staff and link this to patient outcome. We aim to answer the questions: what proportion of patients within critical care have care deemed inappropriate? What is the level of agreement between doctors and nurses? What is the outcome (at 6 months) of the patients who are deemed to have received inappropriate care?
REC name
London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/0184
Date of REC Opinion
28 Oct 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion