Quality of Life and Recommendations for Further Care

Physician recommendations for further medical treatment or palliative treatment only at the end of life may influence patient decisions. Little is known about the patient characteristics that affect physician-assessed quality of life or how such assessments are related to subsequent recommendations.

A 2010 mailed survey of practicing U.S. physicians (1,156/1,878 or 62% of eligible physicians responded).

Measures included an end of life vignette with five experimentally varied patient characteristics: setting, alimentation, pain, cognition, and communication. Physicians rated vignette patient quality of life on a scale from 0 to 100 and indicated whether they would recommend continuing full medical treatment or palliative treatment only. Cognitive deficits and alimentation had the greatest impacts on recommendations for further care, but pain and communication were also significant (all p < 0.001). Physicians who recommended continuing full medical treatment rated quality of life three times higher than those recommending palliative treatment only (40.41 vs 12.19; p < 0.01). Religious physicians were more likely to assess quality of life higher and to recommend full medical treatment.

Physician judgments about quality of life are highly correlated with recommendations for further care. Patients and family members might consider these biases when negotiating medical decisions.