Importance: The American College of Surgeons Trauma Quality Improvement Program (TQIP) guidelines encourage trauma service clinicians to deliver palliative care in parallel with life-sustaining treatment and recommend goals of care (GOC) discussions within 72 hours of admission for patients with serious illness.
Objective: To measure adherence to TQIP guidelines-recommended GOC discussions for trauma patients with serious illness, treated at a level I trauma center in the US.
Design, setting, and participants: This retrospective cohort study included 674 adults admitted to a trauma service center for 3 or more days between December 2019 and June 2020. The medical records of 486 patients who met the criteria for serious illness using a consensus definition adapted to the National Trauma Data Bank were reviewed for the presence of a GOC discussion. Patients were divided into 2 cohorts based on admission before or after the guidelines were incorporated into the institutional practice guidelines on March 1, 2020.
Main outcomes and measures: The primary outcomes were GOC completion within 72 hours of admission and during the overall hospitalization. Patient and clinical factors associated with GOC completion were assessed. Other palliative care processes measured included palliative care consultation, prior advance care planning document, and do-not-resuscitate code status. Additional end-of-life processes (ie, comfort care and inpatient hospice) were measured in a subset with inpatient mortality.
Results: Of 674 patients meeting the review criteria, 486 (72.1%) met at least 1 definition of serious illness (mean [SD] age, 60.9 [21.3] years; mean [SD] Injury Severity Score, 16.9 [12.3]). Of these patients, 328 (67.5%) were male and 266 (54.7%) were White. Among the seriously ill patients, 92 (18.9%) had evidence of GOC completion within 72 hours of admission and 124 (25.5%) during the overall hospitalization. No differences were observed between patients admitted before and after institutional guideline publication in GOC completion within 72 hours (19.0% [47 of 248 patients] vs 18.9% [45 of 238]; P = .99) or during the overall hospitalization (26.2% [65 of 248 patients] vs 24.8% [59 of 238]; P = .72). After adjusting for age, GOC completion was found to be associated with the presence of mechanical ventilation (odds ratio [OR], 6.42; 95% CI, 3.49-11.81) and meeting multiple serious illness criteria (OR, 4.07; 95% CI, 2.25-7.38).
Conclusions and relevance: The findings of this cohort study suggest that, despite the presence of national guidelines, GOC discussions for patients with serious illness were documented infrequently. This study suggests a need for system-level interventions to ensure best practices and may inform strategies to measure and improve trauma service quality in palliative care.