CRITICAL Care - End of Life in the ED

The Gist: Palliative care is an emerging field in Emergency Medicine and most of us are inadequately equipped to discuss end of life issues, death and dying, which are all quite common in the Emergency Department (ED) [1].  We often feel uncomfortable in these situations as our instinct remains - resuscitate first, ask questions later. In a community that values cutting edge, critical care medicine, I was stunned when I realized that Free Open Access Medical education (FOAM) has engendered me to think twice about a procedure and take the time to ascertain what a patient actually wants.

These FOAM resources changed my course as a budding Emergency Physician and made me realize how ill equipped I was to handle dying patients, despite the frequency with which I encounter them.  As such, I felt compelled to use my slot at our residency conference dedicated to critical care to discuss end of life issues with my colleagues.  Here it is as FOAM, since I hassle others to share their talks.

CRITICAL Care - End of Life in the ED from Lauren Westafer on Vimeo.

The FOAM

SMACC GOLD (iTunes)

• Plenary "What is possible, What is reasonable, What is best?"
• Liz Crowe "Swearing Your Way Out of a Crisis."  This light hearted and absolutely hilarious talk gets at the difficulties of working surrounded by death and that there is still room for humanity and optimism - despite the cynicism popular in medicine. 
• Greg Kelly "When Children Die"

EMCrit with Dr. Ashley Shreves "Critical Care Palliation"

Boring EM - An Approach to Palliative Care in the ED

The Geripal Blog - The Importance of Language

The Take Home

Run these ABCD's in tandem with our typical ABCs (Airway, Breathing, Circulation) because the trajectory that we launch patients on matters - whether it's to the ICU with an endotracheal tube, to dialysis with a line, or a palliative care consult [1, 6-9,15].

Advance Care Directives (does the patient have one?), Ask the patient/caregivers what they want.

• Identify if a patient has a health care proxy or physician order for life sustaining treatment (POLST).  
• Use appropriate language, avoid jargon.  The phrase, "Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)," is falling out of favor and major societies are now using the language "Allow Natural Death"[3]. Try replacing DNR with "It sounds like she would want a natural death."  
• Dying patients, even those with DNR orders, Comfort Measure Only orders, or those with Do Not Hospitalize directives come to the hospital because dying is hard, uncomfortable, and stressful.  Figure out what they want and need, it's not always a tube or a line.

Better - Make the patient feel better

• Turn off monitors or beeping pumps (especially if they're beeping), generously dole out opioids for dyspnea/pain, offer various means of respiratory relief (non-rebreather, nasal cannula, non-invasive ventilation).

Caregivers - identify the patient's caregivers and Communicate with all parties in appropriate language

• As above, use appropriate language, avoid jargon.  My favorite phrase, effective on nearly all patients, "What is most important right now?"

Decisions - offer medically appropriate decisions in ways patients and caregivers can understand.  Aggressive resuscitation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) are appropriate in many situations, but not all.  Think about the downstream consequences, positive and negative, of various courses of action.

• The publics perception of CPR is largely misinformed and studies show that most people overestimate the success of CPR to hospital discharge.  One study of patients over 70 years of age found over half believed survival after CPR was >50% and 23% believed survival to discharge was >90% after CPR [2].  Furthermore, people may not understand that CPR does reverse the underlying process and a patient is typically sicker after CPR than they were before.  Let patients know the implications of these decisions.  For example, once someone dies, CPR involves chest compressions which often result in broken ribs but sometimes restart the heart.  There's no guarantee that if we restart the heart that we will get his/her brain function back.
• If appropriate, offer more than one option and recognize the power and responsibility that comes with the entrusted title of physician.  People do listen to provider recommendations [5].  For example, some patients may want aggressive testing and treatment for etiologies of dyspnea, some may want oral antibiotics for a pneumonia if it may improve their shortness of breath, and some may opt solely for opioids. 

References:
1. Members of the Emergency Medicine Practice Committee.  Emergency Department Palliative Care Information Paper June 2012.   ACEP 
2. Adams DH, Snedden DP. How misconceptions among elderly patients regarding survival outcomes of inpatient cardiopulmonary resuscitation affect do-not-resuscitate orders. J Am Osteopath Assoc. 2006;106(7):402–4. 
3. Breault JL. DNR, DNAR, or AND? Is Language Important? Ochsner J. 2011;11(4):302–6. 
4. Cassel JB, Kerr K, Pantilat S, Smith TJ. Palliative care consultation and hospital length of stay. J Palliat Med. 2010;13(6):761–7. doi:10.1089/jpm.2009.0379.
5. Cook D, Rocker G. Dying with Dignity in the Intensive Care Unit. N Engl J Med. 2014;370(26):2506–2514. doi:10.1056/NEJMra1208795.
6. DeVader TE, Albrecht R, Reiter M. Initiating palliative care in the emergency department. J Emerg Med. 2012;43(5):803–10. doi:10.1016/j.jemermed.2010.11.035.
7. DeVader TE, Jeanmonod R. The effect of education in hospice and palliative care on emergency medicine residents’ knowledge and referral patterns. J Palliat Med. 2012;15(5):510–5. doi:10.1089/jpm.2011.0381.
8. Lamba S, Mosenthal AC. Hospice and palliative medicine: a novel subspecialty of emergency medicine. J Emerg Med. 2012;43(5):849–53. doi:10.1016/j.jemermed.2010.04.010.
9. Lamba S, Quest TE. Hospice care and the emergency department: rules, regulations, and referrals. Ann Emerg Med. 2011;57(3):282–90. doi:10.1016/j.annemergmed.2010.06.569.
10. Schmidt TA, Zive D, Fromme EK, Cook JNB, Tolle SW. Physician orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST): lessons learned from analysis of the Oregon POLST Registry. Resuscitation. 2014;85(4):480–5. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2013.11.027.
11. Wright A a, Keating NL, Balboni T a, Matulonis U a, Block SD, Prigerson HG. Place of death: correlations with quality of life of patients with cancer and predictors of bereaved caregivers’ mental health. J Clin Oncol. 2010;28(29):4457–64. doi:10.1200/JCO.2009.26.3863.
12. Wu FM, Newman JM, Lasher A, Brody A a. Effects of initiating palliative care consultation in the emergency department on inpatient length of stay. J Palliat Med. 2013;16(11):1362–7. doi:10.1089/jpm.2012.0352.