Limitation of treatment in prehospital care – the experiences of helicopter emergency medical service physicians in a nationwide multicentre survey

Table 3 Features of prehospital limitation of care order decisions

Features of prehospital limitation of care order decisions	Physicians who mentioned
Features of prehospital limitation of care order decisions	n	(%)
Patient characteristics
Challenging situations to make a LCO by patients’ characteristics	41	69
Children and adolescent	26	44
Severe comorbidities	16	27
-Malignancy	5	8
Disabled patients (incl. intellectual and developmental disabilities)	11	19
In nursing home or in health care facility	11	19
Aged	10	17
Decreased cognitive status	4	7
Existing DNAR without other LCO	2	3
Event characteristics
Limited data in use in the situation	31	53
Importance of solving the baseline functional status	17	29
Acute situations (cardiac arrest, injury, drowning etc.)	17	29
Interaction/communication with the next-of-kin	15	25
Lacking treatment plans on patients in HCF/NH	5	8
The limited resources of EMS system and health care	4	7
Limited time in use in the situation	3	5

The first part shows patients for whom making a prehospital limitation of care orders (LCO) are the most challenging. Other features of prehospital LCO situations in general are presented in the lower part of the table. Repeating reduced expressions (=codes) were identified in the HEMS physicians’ qualitative answers and quantified. The numbers are physicians who mentioned a certain code, regardless of how many times that physician mentioned the code. DNAR is a ‘do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation’ order, EMS is Emergency Medical Services, HCF is health care facility and NH is nursing home

ISSN: 1757-7241