Best Case/Worst Case: ICU, with special content for patients with COVID-19

• COVID-19
• Engagement in Care
• HIPxChange
• Infectious Disease
• Older Adults
• Quality and Safety
• Surgery

Background

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, critically ill patients have been hospitalized and isolated from their families and loved ones. In many hospitals, the palliative care team has been charged with maintaining communication between the critical care team and their patients’ families. The Best Case/Worst Case: ICU (COVID-19) communication toolkit is designed to assist separated families and to help them develop an understanding of their loved one’s illness, prognostic awareness and the range of possible outcomes.

Our original intervention, Best Case/Worst Case: High-Stakes Surgical Decisions, was designed specifically for face-to-face clinical interactions to support shared decision making in the context of life-limiting surgical illness. The essential elements of this tool are narrative descriptions, called scenario planning, and a hand-written graphic aid to illustrate a choice between treatments and to engage patients in deliberation. We have previously tested Best Case/Worst Case with surgeons and acutely ill surgical patients. We found that this intervention transforms the structure of the decision-making conversation and improves shared decision making on objective measures.

To expand the use of scenario planning to the ICU, where a major treatment decision does not occur each day, but evolves over time, we developed a novel version of our Best Case/Worst Case tool for use in the surgical ICU with older adults with traumatic injury. Funded by the NIA (R21 AG055856), Best Case/Worst Case: trauma ICU has been tested in Texas and Oregon (study results pending).

In March of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, palliative care clinicians at the University of Wisconsin were asked to bridge the communication between patients’ families and the critical care team. We thus adapted the Best Case/Worst Case: trauma ICU intervention to suit these crisis needs. This toolkit has adapted material from the trauma ICU that now serve as training materials specific for use of the Best Case/Worst Case: ICU (COVID-19). Although it would be ideal to use this tool for all hospitalized patients during the pandemic, this has not been possible at our institution and we would not imagine others would have capacity to do this as well. We anticipate this intervention would be most beneficial for patients with COVID-19 in the ICU or with signs of impending need for the ICU.

Why use this toolkit?

The Best Case/Worst Case: ICU (COVID-19) toolkit helps palliative care clinicians and other clinicians navigate daily conversations with patients’ families. It also informs critical care clinicians about the lives of the patients they are caring for and supports families who are absent from the patient’s bedside and isolated at home. The toolkit can help critical care providers understand the patient’s overall trajectory when there is a high rate of care-team member transition.

Who should use this toolkit?

These training materials are intended for use by:

1. Clinicians who are caring for patients who have COVID-19 and those who are tasked with communicating with families.
2. Educators who would like to teach clinicians and clinical staff to use Best Case/Worst Case for patients with COVID-19.

What does the toolkit contain?

All materials are in either PowerPoint, PDF, or PNG formats. These materials include:

1. Step-by-Step Instructions for using Best Case/Worst Case: ICU (COVID-19)
2. Templates filled with hypothetical examples
3. Blank Template: Best Case/Worst Case: ICU (COVID-19)
   • For COVID-19 patients who are in the ICU “ICU”
   • For COVID-19 patients who are not in the ICU, but are getting sicker “nonICU”
   • For COVID-19 patients, worst case scenario is left blank for clinicians to create their own
4. De-identified photos demonstrating use of the intervention
5. Best Case/Worst Case: ICU pocket card 

How should these tools be used?