End-of-life care at an academic medical center: are attending physicians, house staff, nurses, and bereaved family members equally satisfied? Implications for palliative care.

Background: End-of-life care is deemed to be poor in the United States - particularly in large teaching hospitals. Via a brief survey, we examined satisfaction with end-of-life care for those patients who died in our academic medical center from provider and family perspectives.

Methods: To assess the correlation between overall satisfaction between providers (attending, housestaff, and nurses) as well as family members for decedents who died in our hospital, we conducted a satisfaction survey regarding care in the last three days of life.

Resident approaches to advance care planning on the day of hospital admission.

Background: Advance care planning is the process of establishing a patient's goals and preferences for future care. Previous research has demonstrated a need to improve patient-physician communication around advance care planning. A critical time for advance care planning conversations is the day of admission to the hospital.