Goals of Care among Hospitalized Patients: A Validation Study

Our objective was to validate 6 literature-derived goals of care by analyzing open-ended and closed-ended responses about goals of care from a previous study of hospitalized patients. Eight clinicians categorized patients' open-ended articulations of their goals of care using a literature-derived framework and then compared those categorizations to patients' own closed-ended selections of their most important goal of care. Clinicians successfully categorized patients' open-ended responses using the literature-derived framework 83.5% of the time, and their categorizations matched patients' closed-ended most important goal of care 87.8% of the time. Goals that did not fit within the literature-derived framework all pertained to the goal of understanding a patient's diagnosis or prognosis; this seventh potential goal can be added to the literature-derived framework of 6 goals of care.