Some health care organizations allow physicians to withhold cardiopulmonary resuscitation from a patient, despite patient or surrogate requests that it be provided, when they believe it will be more harmful than beneficial. Such cases usually involve patients with terminal diagnoses whose medical teams argue that aggressive treatments are medically inappropriate or likely to be harmful. Although there is state-to-state variability and a considerable judicial gray area about the conditions and mechanisms for refusals to perform CPR, medical teams typically follow a (...) set of clearly defined procedures for these decisions. The procedures are based on the principle of nonmaleficence and typically include consultation with hospital ethics committees, reflecting the guidelines of relevant professional associations. Ethical debates about when CPR can and should be limited tend to rely more on discussions of theory, principles, and case studies than systematic empirical study of the situations in which such limitations are applied. Sociologists of bioethics call for empirical study, arguing that what ethicists and health professionals believe they are doing when they draft policies or invoke principles does not always mirror what is happening on the ground. In this article, we begin the task of modeling the empirical analyses sociologists call for, focusing on a cohort at Massachusetts General Hospital. We inductively analyzed ethics committee notes and medical records of nineteen patients whose surrogates did not accept the decision to withhold CPR. (shrink)

Systematic study of the intersection of ethics consultation services and solid organ transplants and recipients can identify and illustrate ethical issues that arise in the clinical care of these patients, including challenges beyond resource allocation. This was a single-centre, retrospective cohort study of all adult ethics consultations between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2017, at a large academic medical centre in the north-eastern United States. Of the 880 ethics consultations, sixty (6.8 per cent ) involved solid organ transplant, thirty-nine (...) (65.0 per cent) for candidates and twenty-one (35.0 per cent ) for recipients. Ethics consultations were requested for 4.3 per cent of heart, 4.9 per cent of lung, 0.3 per cent of liver, and 0.3 per cent of kidney transplant recipients over the study period. Nurses were more likely to request ethics consultations for recipients than physicians (80.0 per cent vs 20.0 per cent, p = 0.006). The most common reason for consultation among transplant candidates was discussion about intensity of treatment or goals of care after the patient was not or was no longer a transplant candidate. The most common reason for ethics consultation among transplant recipients was disagreement between transplant providers and patients/families/non-transplant healthcare professionals over the appropriate intensity of treatment for recipients. Very few consultations involved questions about appropriate resource allocation. Ethics consultants involved in these cases most often navigated communication challenges between transplant and non-transplant healthcare professionals and patients and families. (shrink)

Despite increased calls for hospital ethics committees to serve as default decision-makers about life-sustaining treatment for unrepresented patients who lack decision-making capacity or a surrogate decision-maker and whose wishes regarding medical care are not known, little is known about how committees currently function in these cases. This was a retrospective cohort study of all ethics committee consultations involving decision-making about LST for unrepresented patients at a large academic hospital from 2007 to 2013. There were 310 ethics committee consultations, twenty-five of (...) which involved unrepresented patients. In thirteen cases, the ethics consultants evaluated a possible substitute decision-maker identified by social workers and/or case managers. In the remaining cases, the ethics consultants worked with the medical team to contact previous healthcare professionals to provide substituted judgement, found prior advance care planning documents, or identified the patient’s best interest as the decision-making standard. In the majority of cases, the final decision was to limit or withdraw LST or to change code status to Do Not Resuscitate/Do Not Intubate. Substitute decision-makers who had been evaluated through the ethics consultation process and who made the final decision alone were more likely to continue LST than cases in which physicians made the final decision. In our centre, the primary role of ethics consultants in decision-making for unrepresented patients is to identify appropriate decision-making standards. In the absence of other data suggesting that ethics committees, as currently constituted, are ready to serve as substitute decision-makers for unrepresented patients, caution is necessary before designating these committees as default decision-makers. (shrink)

A growing body of research has demonstrated significant heterogeneity of hospital ethics committee (HEC) size, membership and training requirements, length of appointment, institutional support, clinical and policy roles, and predictors of self identified success. Because these studies have focused on HECs at a single point in time, however, little is known about how the composition of HECs changes over time and what impact these changes have on committee utilization. The current study presents 20 years of data on the evolution of (...) the Massachusetts General Hospital HEC. Between 1993 and 2012, the average number of committee members per year was 38 ± 3 and the average length of membership was 4.8 ± 0.4 years. During that time, the committee performed 934 consults, averaging 47 ± 3 per year. Attendance rates fell from 61.5 to 23.8 % over the study period and were inversely correlated with the total number of members. Between 1993 and 2012, the committee saw substantial growth in the diversity of the professional backgrounds of its members. Multivariate analysis, however, suggests that substantial changes in committee composition did not impact its utilization and that other factors are more likely to explain fluctuations in consultation volume. (shrink)

The lung allocation score system in the United States and several European countries gives more weight to risk of death without transplantation than to survival following transplantation. As a result, centers transplant sicker patients, leading to increased length of initial hospitalization. The care of patients who have accumulated functional deficits or additional organ dysfunction during their prolonged stay can be ethically complex. Disagreement occurs between the transplant team, patients and families, and non-transplant health care professionals over the burdens of ongoing (...) intensive intervention. These cases highlight important ethical issues in organ transplantation, including the nature and requirements of transplant informed consent, the limits of physician prognostication, patient autonomy and decision-making capacity following transplant, obligations to organ donors and to other potential recipients, and the impact of program metrics on individualized recipient care. We outline general ethical principles for the care of lung transplant recipients with prolonged hospitalization and give regulatory, research, and patient-centered recommendations for these cases. (shrink)

While a significant literature has appeared discussing theoretical ethical concerns regarding COVID-19, particularly regarding resource prioritization, as well as a number of personal reflections on providing patient care during the early stages of the pandemic, systematic analysis of the actual ethical issues involving patient care during this time is limited. This single-center retrospective cohort mixed methods study of ethics consultations during the first surge of the COVID 19 pandemic in Massachusetts between March 15, 2020 through June 15, 2020 aim to (...) fill this gap. Results indicate that there was no significant difference in the median number of monthly consultation cases during the first COVID-19 surge compared to the same period the year prior and that the characteristics of the ethics consults during the COVID-19 surge and same period the year prior were also similar. Through inductive analysis, we identified four themes related to ethics consults during the first COVID-19 surge including prognostic difficulty for COVID-19 positive patients, challenges related to visitor restrictions, end of life scenarios, and family members who were also positive for COVID-19. Cases were complex and often aligned with multiple themes. These patient case-related sources of ethical issues were managed against the backdrop of intense systemic ethical issues and a near lockdown of daily life. Healthcare ethics consultants can learn from this experience to enhance training to be ready for future disasters. (shrink)

Critical care society guidelines recommend that ethics committees mediate intractable conflict over potentially inappropriate treatment, including Do Not Resuscitate status. There are, however, limited data on cases and circumstances in which ethics consultants recommend not offering cardiopulmonary resuscitation despite patient or surrogate requests and whether physicians follow these recommendations. This was a retrospective cohort of all adult patients at a large academic medical center for whom an ethics consult was requested for disagreement over DNR status. Patient demographic predictors of ethics (...) consult outcomes were analyzed. In 42 of the 116 cases, the patient or surrogate agreed to the clinician recommended DNR order following ethics consultation. In 72 of 74 of the remaining cases, ethics consultants recommended not offering CPR. Physicians went on to write a DNR order without patient/surrogate consent in 57 of those cases. There were no significant differences in age, race/ethnicity, country of origin, or functional status between patients where a DNR order was and was not placed without consent. Physicians were more likely to place a DNR order for patients believed to be imminently dying. The median time from DNR order to death was 4 days with a 90-day mortality of 88.2%. In this single-center cohort study, there was no evidence that patient demographic factors affected ethics consultants’ recommendation to withhold CPR despite patient/surrogate requests. Physicians were most likely to place a DNR order without consent for imminently dying patients. (shrink)