A standard dataset was extracted from the CHOA trauma registry including demographic variables (age, gender, race, ethnicity, payer, street address, and zip code) and non-demographic variables (medical record number [MRN], height of fall, MOI, injuries sustained, procedures performed, Injury Severity Score [ISS], and ED disposition).
The number of life-sustaining procedures was used as a measure of workload, but this is not a validated measure of workload.
A study examining the relationship between nursing shifts with and without a death found that a death was more likely when the nurse-to-patient ratio was lower, the patient turnover was higher, and the number of life-sustaining procedures was higher [14].
She also recommends that people with advanced illnesses talk to their doctors about a form known as POLST, or Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, in which patients can indicate whether they want resuscitation, feeding tubes, ventilators and other life-sustaining procedures.
One justification for this category is that modern life-sustaining procedures can prolong dying and delay death.
Life-sustaining procedures may be complicated and they obviously require effort on the part of the professionals.
Beauchamp and Childress emphasise that when medical treatment is futile or when its burdens outweigh the benefits, the principle of nonmaleficence might justify or sometimes even require withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining procedures.
A complication occurring during pregnancy can lead to death more than 42 days later, and increasingly available modern life-sustaining procedures and technologies enable more women to survive beyond this period.
First, it must noted that patients with acute onset of severe neurologic disease frequently are not capable of expressing their preferences regarding acceptance or decline of life-sustaining procedures [ 5, 6].
Indeed, the main, and rather simple, idea sustaining that procedure is the following.
MOI, injuries sustained, and procedures performed were extracted from ICD-9 CM E-codes included in the trauma registry.
