The Western journal of medicine
-
Objectives To describe physicians' prognostic accuracy in terminally ill patients and to evaluate the determinants of that accuracy. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Five outpatient hospice programs in Chicago. ⋯ Conclusions Physicians are inaccurate in their prognoses for terminally ill patients, and the error is systematically optimistic. The inaccuracy is, in general, not restricted to certain kinds of physicians or patients. These phenomena may be adversely affecting the quality of care given to patients near the end of life.
-
To measure the frequency of people reporting torture among patients in a medical outpatient clinic and to determine primary care physicians' awareness of their patients' exposure to torture. ⋯ Physicians of patients who have not been born in the United States and who attend urban general medical clinics frequently are unaware that their patients are survivors of torture. Primary care physicians can be the locus of intervention in the care of torture survivors. The first step is for physicians to recognize the possibility of torture survivors among their patients.