![]() Studies have shown that physicians frequently do not discuss prognosis with the patient or their caregiver, they present fewer facts and less detail concerning prognostic information compared with other types of information, do not adequately explore the patient’s understanding of his/her condition and are reluctant to provide a frank estimate of survival even if the patient requests this information. The need for adequate competencies in providing end-of-life care has been accentuated by the current global pandemic of COVID-19 that is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives irrespective of race, religion or creed.Īn initial step in beginning a discussion on end-of-life care is the disclosure of a poor prognosis to the patient. Doctors who had worked in ICU were more comfortable withholding than withdrawing treatment (adjusted-OR:1.99 95%CI = 1.2–3.31).Īs much as possessing the competencies to provide care to treat illnesses and to maintain good quality health and longevity, doctors are expected to possess knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to provide compassionate and appropriate care at the end-of-life. Doctors who had pursued postgraduate studies were more likely to be aware of breaking bad news (adjusted-Odds-Ratio:1.99 95%CI = 1.19–3.32), advance directives (adjusted-OR: 4.15 95%CI = 2.49–6.94), aware of certifying the correct time of death (adjusted-OR:2.37 95%CI = 1.33–4.2) and less reluctant to make DNACPR decisions (adjusted-OR:1.74 95%CI = 1.13–2.68). Participants scored a mean of 9.2 (SD = 3.9) of a maximum 14 points when tested on principles of a ‘good death’. Only 65.9% of doctors favoured disclosing terminal prognosis to patients 27.7% of doctors were aware of advance directives 14.6% were aware of the correct time of death when certifying brain death 70.3% felt more comfortable in withholding than withdrawing life-sustaining treatment 61.3% were aware of do-not-attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) decisions while 26.7% felt reluctant to administer it 15.1% thought that all life-sustaining therapy should be withdrawn with a DNACPR decision and only17.9% were able to name the four principles of medical ethics while 57.9% could not name a single. Compared to undergraduate (65.6% n = 256), only 27.4% (n = 107) had received end-of-life care training at postgraduate level. Of the responders who had not been a caregiver for a terminally ill relative (n = 390), 57.9% were men with a mean age of 36.5 years (SD = 8.2). ![]() ![]() ![]() The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
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