About
Clinical Instructor
Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
UCLA
Project title: Understanding Inappropriate Treatment in Critically Ill Patients
Mentors:
Neil Wenger, MD, MPH – UCLA
Derjung Mimi Tarn, MD, PhD - UCLA
Chi-Hong Tseng, PhD – UCLA
Eric Kleerup, MD - UCLA
Multidisciplinary Expertise:
Critical care, pulmonary medicine, ethics, and end-of-life research
Project Description:
Advances in medicine have enabled the ICU to save lives as well as prolong the dying process. Inappropriate treatment, defined here as a treatment that should not be provided because it does not offer the patient benefit, can prolong suffering, cause family distress, damage the healthcare team morale, and transform death into an undignified process. In this proposal, Dr. Huynh aims to characterize the patient, clinical, and communication factors that are related to the provision of inappropriate treatment in the ICU and arrive at an empirical definition. The empirical definition will be validated and used to generate a model to prospectively identify patients at risk of receiving futile treatment. Understanding of the factors leading to provision of such care will advance the field by providing a foundation for intervention.