What Families Need and Physicians Deliver: Contrasting Communication Preferences Between Surrogate Decision-Makers and Physicians During Outcome Prognostication in Critically Ill TBI Patients

Background Surrogate decision-makers (“surrogates”) and physicians of incapacitated patients have different views of prognosis and how it should be communicated, but this has not been investigated in neurocritically ill patients. We examined surrogates’ communication preferences and physicians’ practices during the outcome prognostication for critically ill traumatic brain injury (ciTBI) patients in two level-1 trauma centers and seven academic medical centers in the USA.