International journal of palliative nursing | 2019
Is the surprise question a useful predictive measure of mortality?
Abstract
The author discusses the predictive value of the surprise question to identify whether patients should be referred for palliative care intervention. Topics mentioned include the importance of the assessment of patient s palliative care needs, tendency of healthcare providers to overestimate the need the palliative care and for the patient to live longer than the predicted timeframe, and the difficulty of developing standard criteria or achieve consensus.