Dying to be better: Outlining the growing benefits of palliative care training in intensive care medicine

Abstract

A core part of an intensivist’s work involves navigating the challenges of End of Life Care. While rates of survival from critical illness have gradually improved, 15%–20% of our patients die during their hospital admission, and a further 20% die within a year. 80% of our patients lack capacity to express their wishes with regard to treatment escalation planning. The critical care unit can be an excellent place to provide a good death, however the very nature of critical illness provides some obstacles to this. Prognostic uncertainty, time-pressured critical decision making, and lack of meaningful contact with a patient and their loved ones are but a few. In this article, we compare the ethos of critical care and palliative care medicine and explore how training in both of these specialities could be brought closer together and more formalised such that the intensivists of the future are more strongly equipped with the skills to shape a critical care unit to overcome these challenges and provide the best care to these patients, many of whom may be in the final phase of their life.