Clinicians’ intuitions about when terminally ill patients will die are often inaccurate

A simple method, routinely used by clinicians to help identify patients who may be approaching their last year of life, is frequently inaccurate, according to a new study led by UCL researchers and funded by Marie Curie. The "Surprise Question" was developed as a way to recognise those patients who might benefit from palliative care. It typically asks clinicians to consider the question: "Would you be surprised if this patient died within the next 12 months?"   The study, conducted by researchers at the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department at UCL and published in BMC Medicine , looked at 26 previously published studies comprising 25,718 predictions made by clinicians using the "Surprise Question" over a ten-year period. The findings reveal that the accuracy of predictions varied considerably, with clinicians tending to over-predict the number of people whom they thought would die. Over half (54%) of those predicted to die within a specified time period, lived longer than expected. Clinicians made inaccurate predictions about one third of the patients who did die. Overall, they were incorrect in a quarter (25%) of cases.