Arch Intern Med
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Multicenter Study
A multi-institutional study of care given to patients dying in hospitals. Ethical and practice implications.
Relatively little attention has been paid to how physicians care for dying patients once an initial decision to forgo life-sustaining treatment is made. ⋯ The majority of patients dying at these institutions did so after decisions to limit treatment, but few patients were able to participate in these decisions. Forgoing life-sustaining treatment generally occurred in a sequential manner over several days; the rationale for this stepwise retreat is not, however, clinically or ethically obvious.