Predicting mortality is hard. Doctors must consider an array of complex factors, ranging from a patient’s age and family history to their response to drugs and the nature of the affliction itself. To complicate matters, doctors have to contend with their own egos, biases, or an unconscious reluctance to assess a patient’s prospects for what they are. Sometimes doctors are spot on, but other times they can be off by several months (if not years), both in terms of predicting death too late or too early.

This poses a problem for the accurate scheduling of palliative care. Typically, when a patient is not likely to live beyond a year, their treatment is moved to a palliative care team, who try to make the patient’s last days or months as free from suffering as possible. To that end, they work to manage a patient’s pain, nausea, loss of appetite and confusion, provide psychological and moral support, while respecting the social, cultural, and spiritual needs of the patient and their family.

But if a patient is transitioned to palliative care too late, they’re likely to miss out on this important stage of care. And if they’re admitted too early, it places an unnecessary strain on the healthcare system.

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Image via Flickr  Some rights reserved by mattyp

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