Journal of hospital medicine : an official publication of the Society of Hospital Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
If asked, hospitalized patients will choose whether to receive life-sustaining therapies.
No national policy requires health care providers to discuss with hospitalized patients whether the latter would want cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or mechanical ventilation (MV) in the event of cardiopulmonary failure. ⋯ Patients are willing to discuss and give informed consent for CPR and mechanical ventilation early in hospitalization. Only a minority drafted advance directives during hospitalization. Larger studies that include patients at other centers are required to determine whether these findings are reproducible and whether this approach is clinically feasible.