The experiences and opinions of Polish medical personnel regarding limitations of futile treatment in intensive care units – A questionnaire study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Objectives Futile treatment is defined as maintenance of organ function without achieving meaningful goals of care. Poland is characterized by low prevalence of introducing limitations of treatment in intensive care units (ICUs). The aim of the study was to conduct a questionnaire study to evaluate the approach of Polish medical personnel to futile treatment in the ICUs. Materials and Methods We conducted an anonymous questionnaire study during a national intensive care conference in April 2023. We collected data on participants’ experiences with limiting futile treatment and their demographics. Statistical analysis comparing the responses between respondents with shorter (less than 10 years) or longer (10 years or more) work experience was conducted with a chi-squared test with residual analysis and Bonferroni correction. Results 354 respondents completed the questionnaire. Most participants (94.5%) found discussing end-of-life care with patients important. Additionally, 81.6% believed that the medical personnel should be more decisive than the patient’s family regarding end-of-life care decisions. While 81% were aware of the existence of futile treatment protocol, only 35% used it regularly. Fear of legal consequences (61.9%) or family’s reaction (55.6%) were the most common reasons for not adhering to existing guidelines. Improving hospital procedures (83.6%) and proper legislation (67.2%) were commonly suggested measures to improve end-of-life care. Respondents with shorter work experience more often reported no awareness of futile treatment protocol (28.7% vs. 6.9%, p < 0.001) as well as no experience discussing treatment limitations with patients (24.6% vs. 8.2%, p < 0.001) or their families (20.0% vs. 3.8%) compared to the clinicians with longer work experience. Significance of results Despite widespread recognition of the unethical nature of futile treatment, it remains controversial among Polish ICU clinicians. Improvement of legislation and hospital procedures could contribute to improvement of clinicians’ and patients’ well-being when facing end-of-life care decisions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".