Improving Shared-Decision Making in the Intensive Care Unit Using Patient-reported Outcome Information

Background Due to advances in critical care medicine, more patients survive their critical illness. However, many Intensive Care Unit (ICU) survivors suffer from physical, cognitive and/or mental problems impacting patients' quality of life (QoL). Because of a lack of long-term outcome information, ICU physicians make decisions regarding ICU treatment based on their clinical experience and intuition. Moreover, patients and relatives are often not involved in the decision-making process.

To improve the ICU decision-making process and to make it more substantiated, the use of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) is of utmost importance. Therefore, the Radboudumc, in collaboration with six regional hospitals, including Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis (JBZ), set up a large-scale prospective cohort study, MONITOR-IC (www.monitor-ic.nl), to study long-term outcomes of ICU survivors', their QoL and their needs.

This research sets out to evaluate the effect of incorporation of outcome information in the ICU decision-making process on patient and family reported outcomes and experiences of patients, relatives and ICU clinicians in a randomized clinical trial design in the Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis and Radboudumc in the Netherlands.

Methods A prediction model for long-term QoL was previously developed using physiological, pathological, drug and treatment data from patients' electronic health record combined with PROMs from one centre of the MONITOR-IC. It was externally validated with the data of six other centres and an E-health tool was developed, incorporating this prediction model. For this research, the E-health tool will be incorporated in family meetings.