End Of Life in the Critically Ill patiEnt

More than 20% of deaths occur in hospital after a stay in intensive care units; up to half of them happens as result of a treatment limitation. Ensuring end-of-life quality is important, not only because is a moral duty of all caregivers, but also to prevent negative effects in close relatives of dead patients.

In an assessment of quality of in-hospital deaths involving 3793 patients, only 35% of the deaths were judged to be of acceptable quality by the nurses.

Assessment tools have been developed recently on this topic. Most studies have focused on the perception of end-of-life quality by close relatives, particularly through the CAESAR scale in the most recent one.

The main purpose of this multicentric study is to evaluate the perception of the quality of the end-of-life in intensive care units seen from the side of the caregivers, in relation to the new French legislative framework.

Inclusion criteria

• Caregivers of intensive care unit whose patient has recently deceased

Exclusion criteria

• Refusal of participation by caregivers
• Refusal of participation by family of deceased patient
• Patient in cardiac arrest at the time of ICU admission.
• Age of deceased patient was under 18 years
• Patient in brain death