Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Project

College/School

College of Nursing

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Project Mentor

Anita Jablonski

Readers

Diane Switzer

Abstract

Patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) are at risk for unmet palliative needs. A palliative care consult screening tool, designed by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC), was trialed in a 6-week retrospective chart review of patients admitted to a 30-bed ICU in Washington State. for a 6-week period in 2021. The screening tool included a collection of 8 unit-specific criteria, where if a patient met any of the criteria, that patient was flagged for a potential palliative care consult. The aim of this project was to evaluate the screening tool for its ability to identify and triage patients by comparing the 44 patients who had received palliative care consult orders and 48 patients identified by the screening tool from a total of 197 patients screened. Patients met, at most, only two criteria so the number of criteria a patient met could not be used to triage patients. Each of the screening tool criteria identified four to 13 patients except for the “Admission from long term acute care facility,” which identified zero patients. The screening tool had a sensitivity of 56.8% and did not identify 19 patients that had received consult orders. The screening tool is not yet ready to be used in the target ICU. Its failure is due to the selected criteria, which need to be adjusted before utilization.

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