Prevalence and predictors of shared decision-making in goals-of-care clinician-family meetings for critically ill neurologic patients: a multi-center mixed-methods study.

BACKGROUND: Shared decision-making is a joint process where patients, or their surrogates, and clinicians make health choices based on evidence and preferences. We aimed to determine the extent and predictors of shared decision-making for goals-of-care discussions for critically ill neurological patients, which is crucial for patient-goal-concordant care but currently unknown. METHODS: We analyzed 72 audio-recorded routine clinician-family meetings during which goals-of-care were discussed from seven US hospitals. These occurred for 67 patients with 72 surrogates and 29 clinicians; one hospital provided 49/72 (68%) of the recordings. Using a previously validated 10-element shared decision-making instrument, we quantified the extent of shared decision-making in each meeting. We measured clinicians' and surrogates' characteristics and prognostic estimates for the patient's hospital survival and 6-month independent function using post-meeting questionnaires. We calculated clinician-family prognostic discordance, defined as ≥ 20% absolute difference between the clinician's and surrogate's estimates. We applied mixed-effects regression to identify independent associations with greater shared decision-making. RESULTS: The median shared decision-making score was 7 (IQR 5-8). Only 6% of meetings contained all 10 shared decision-making elements. The most common elements were "discussing uncertainty"(89%) and "assessing family understanding"(86%); least frequent elements were "assessing the need for input from others"(36%) and "eliciting the context of the decision"(33%). Clinician-family prognostic discordance was present in 60% for hospital survival and 45% for 6-month independent function. Univariate analyses indicated associations between greater shared decision-making and younger clinician age, fewer years in practice, specialty (medical-surgical critical care > internal medicine > neurocritical care > other > trauma surgery), and higher clinician-family prognostic discordance for hospital survival. After adjustment, only higher clinician-family prognostic discordance for hospital survival remained independently associated with greater shared decision-making (p = 0.029). CONCLUSION: Fewer than 1 in 10 goals-of-care clinician-family meetings for critically ill neurological patients contained all shared decision-making elements. Our findings highlight gaps in shared decision-making. Interventions promoting shared decision-making for high-stakes decisions in these patients may increase patient-value congruent care; future studies should also examine whether they will affect decision quality and surrogates' health outcomes.

Intervention Codesign in the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit to Improve Family Meetings.

CONTEXT: Family meetings are encouraged in the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) with the expectation of supporting parental shared decision-making (SDM). However, they often fall short of this goal. Additionally, interprofessional team and family meetings are dominated by input from physicians, under-utilizing the skillset of the full clinical team. OBJECTIVES: 1) To determine feasibility of a codesign process to optimize the preparation of the interprofessional team and parents for conducting SDM-oriented family meetings in the CICU, and 2) to describe the resulting elements of the intervention including new support documents for the team and family to prepare for the meeting, team member roles in the meeting, and optimization of communication skills. METHODS: Experience-based codesign was used with CICU clinicians and parents of children hospitalized in the CICU to develop an intervention at a single institution. Sessions were audio recorded and transcribed and analyzed using modified grounded theory. Participants were surveyed about their engagement in the codesign process to assess feasibility. RESULTS: Fifteen professionals and six parents enrolled in the codesign and endorsed engagement in the process and importance of the intervention elements. Participants identified the benefit of complementary parent and team preparation for family meetings noting five distinct types of meetings that occurred frequently. Documents, processes, and skills training were developed to improve interprofessional teamwork regarding shared decision making and support of parents in family meetings. CONCLUSION: A codesign of an intervention with clinicians and parents in the CICU is a feasible and resulted in an intervention with broad support among clinicians in the CICU.