Documentation patterns on communicating prognosis to patients with terminal illness

ABSTRACT

Introduction@#Prognosis is an issue which most doctors and patients find difficult to discuss. Both patients and physicians find this process distressing as they can be unprepared to receive and give life-altering news. Although clinicians report that they are discussing prognosis, patients and caregivers frequently do not corroborate these reports, creating communication gaps especially in end-of-life situations.@*Objective@#This study determined how attending physicians documented the communication of prognosis on the patients’ records in terms of content, timing, and frequency during the course of hospitalization.@*Methods@#This is a retrospective chart review of 234 terminally-ill patients admitted from January 2020 to March 2020 in five (5) clinical departments of a public tertiary hospital. Discharge summaries and physicians’ daily chart notes were reviewed to identify the major events of each case.@*Results@#Two-thirds of the patients’ records had no documentation of any discussion with patient/family/significant others relating to patients’ worsening condition. The quantitative and qualitative forms of contextual information regarding patient prognosis were infrequently recorded. Notes on conversations of survival rate, probability of treatment response and failure were likewise lacking. However, for the occasional documentation observed, the timing of the communications was appropriate across the disease trajectory and was significantly correlated with all major points of illness deterioration (p<.001). Physician and patient characteristics had no association with the practice of documenting communication prognosis@*Conclusion@#Communication prognosis is not a common practice for most physicians. Prognosis was poorly documented on the patients’ charts, which could suggest that either such a communication process did not take place at all or physician education on documentation should be reinforced by an institutional protocol, especially in the care of terminally ill patients.