A New Generation of Comfort Care Order Sets: Aligning Protocols with Current Principles.

Background: There are few published comfort care order sets for end-of-life symptom management, contributing to variability in treatment of common symptoms. At our academic medical centers, we have observed that rapid titration of opioid infusions using our original comfort care order set's titration algorithm causes increased discomfort from opioid toxicity.

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the process and outcomes of a multiyear revision of a standardized comfort care order set for clinicians to treat end-of-life symptoms in hospitalized patients.