Abandonment at the End of Life From Patient, Caregiver, Nurse, and Physician Perspectives:  Loss of Continuity and Lack of Closure FREE

Expert guidelines on caring for patients at the end of life emphasize the importance of not allowing a patient to feel abandoned, especially when the care plan includes withdrawal of disease-modifying treatment.^1- 5 Nonabandonment has been cited as a primary tenet of medicine and a key value in professionalism.^6- 7 However, limited empirical data describe how physicians put this value into practice. One study of intensive care unit family conferences observed that physicians missed opportunities to respond to family concerns about nonabandonment,⁸ although when present, expressions of nonabandonment correlated with higher family satisfaction.⁹

Despite the professed importance of nonabandonment to end-of-life care, surveys show that patients and family caregivers still experience abandonment around the time of death.^10- 12 Anecdotal descriptions provide vivid first-person accounts,^13- 14 but medical literature does not explain the discrepancy between physicians' stated professional values and patients' and family caregivers' experiences of abandonment.

We found that patients with incurable cancer and advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who were asked to talk about hope and their views of the future independently brought up the subject of abandonment. We then observed abandonment prospectively in this longitudinal study from the perspectives of patients and their family caregivers, physicians, and nurses.

Data for this analysis were drawn from a qualitative study that examined how patients, family caregivers, physicians, and nurses talk about hope in the context of providing or receiving information about a life-limiting illness. Details have been reported previously.^15- 16

We designed a recruitment strategy to sample oncologists, pulmonologists, and general internists with a spectrum of attitudes toward palliative care. To identify potential participants, we selected an expert panel of 9 physicians from these specialties who were “thought leaders” and asked them to identify physicians they believed had good communication skills and who were in 1 of the following 3 categories: physicians who focus on curative or life-prolonging treatment, those who focus on palliative care, or those “in the middle” of these 2 categories. We then randomly selected physicians from each category. Eligibility requirements included 50% or more of time spent in clinical practice and ability to identify at least 4 eligible patients.

Enrolled physicians identified potential patient participants based on (1) a diagnosis of advanced cancer (metastatic solid tumor or nonoperable lung cancer) or severe COPD (defined as oxygen dependent and having a predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 second of <35%) and (2) the physician's assessment that he or she “would not be surprised if the patient died from any cause in the next year.”¹⁷

Patients identified a family caregiver (who could be a biologically related relative or close friend) who was “involved in their medical care,” and a nurse who was “involved in discussing their medical care” who might be willing to participate.

Interviews were conducted by 2 interviewers (J.P.Y. and E. M.) who received at least 20 hours of training from qualitative researchers (B.B.M. and A.L.B.). Respondents were interviewed in the following order: patient, family caregiver, physician, and nurse. Follow-up interviews with patients were conducted at 2 points: 4 to 6 months following study entry and 12 months after study entry. Interviews were recorded using digital recorders and transcribed verbatim.

We used a limited application of grounded theory to analyze the data.^18- 19 Investigators were grouped into analysis pairs, with each pair including a physician or nurse investigator, to review transcripts using open, axial, and selective coding. The entire research team met weekly to analyze interviews during the 27-month data collection period. For this analysis, we used the codes “hospice,” “end of life,” and “no more treatment,” as well as “abandonment” (a code added 2 months after the first code list was established). The probes that we used to inquire about nonabandonment specifically are given in the Box.

Trustworthiness was established by initial review of the coding scheme by the entire multidisciplinary team; review by all investigators of initial coding of all transcripts for the first 10 sets of patient, family caregiver, physician, and nurse and then revision of coding to achieve consensus; and coding of 50% of the remaining transcripts by 2 investigators who met to reconcile differences. Interviews were concluded when saturation was reached for the study's primary focus on hope and information needs; the investigators also concurred that abandonment topics met standards for theoretical saturation.

Of 129 physicians identified by the expert panel, 84 (65%) met eligibility criteria, and 31 of those (37%) participated in the study. Nonparticipants were more likely to be oncologists, and the most common reasons for nonparticipation were “too busy” or “already involved in research” (Table 1). Participating physicians identified 67 eligible patients, and 55 of these patients (82%) were willing to participate (Table 2). Of 55 enrolled patients, 42 identified a family member or friend caregiver, and 36 of these individuals (86%) consented to participate (Table 2). All 25 nurses identified either by patients (n = 16) or physicians (n = 9) participated. Not all patients could name an outpatient nurse they knew well, which reflects the structure of enrolled medical practices. The participants provided more than 220 hours of interviews.

Physician specialties were pulmonary/critical care, medical oncology, and general internal medicine, in similar proportions. Both physicians and nurses were predominantly white (physicians, 90%; nurses, 80%) and highly experienced (physicians, mean of 21 years in practice; nurses, mean of 19 years), and most had some training in end-of-life care (physicians, 61%; nurses, 64%) (Box). Patients and family caregivers were predominantly white (patients, 78%; family caregivers, 81%), older (mean age: patients, 67.3 years; family caregivers, 60.3), and college educated (patients, 62%; family caregivers, 72%) (Table 1). The patients' diagnoses were split between cancer and COPD, and 38% of patients died during the 6 months (mean) they were followed up for this study.

We identified 2 themes describing abandonment of patients and their families: before death, abandonment worries related to loss of continuity between patient and physician; at the time of death or after, abandonment experiences related to lack of closure for patients and families.

Patients described 2 kinds of continuity losses. The first kind of loss was losing access to their physician's medical expertise. For example, one patient said, “I feel I need more help now, than I did . . . and by help I mean I need to be able to depend on my doctor, and I guess I want her to know that, ‘If I call you next week, doctor, will you see me right away?’ ” Another patient, anticipating hospice, said, “You can't seek your regular treatment. . . . Your doctor is out of it.” Although this may represent a misconception about hospice, it also underscores the value patients place on their primary physician's expertise. A patient voiced a concern that, near death, “someone else would take over, who doesn't have a lot of history with [the dying] person. . . . I think that one could feel relatively abandoned.”

The second kind of continuity loss involved the patient-physician relationship, distinct from medical expertise. “I think that it's important that you still have that contact with them even though there isn't anything they can do to make you better,” said one patient, who continued, “I mean, what are they going to do? There isn't anything they can do. And I realize that, but they can hold my hand, so to speak, to the very end.” A nurse recalled how this abandonment fear surfaced with a sense of “desperation” over an unplanned hospital admission: “[The patient asked] Will you go with me? Will you come out and see me?”

Similar to patients, family caregivers also perceived value in continuity. For example, one family member anticipating a transition to hospice said, “The way they presented it . . . they're just here to make you comfortable until you die. But you can't seek your regular treatment from your doctor. Your doctor is out of it. And that's not what we want.” Aside from whether the family understood hospice accurately, the family member's concern about continuity is clear. Another family member talked about the importance of the doctor “wanting to hang in there and fight or try things,” saying that “when your provider gives up, why should you care any more?”

Physicians were conscious of the possibility that patients would feel abandoned, especially at the point where disease-modifying therapy was no longer available. One physician described his approach to explicitly address abandonment: “And what we need to do, now, is refocus our efforts and treat your symptoms. That doesn't mean we're going to abandon you.” Oncologists were particularly aware that patients often equated chemotherapy with continuity. One oncologist, anticipating a “difficult” conversation with a study patient, said, “She's going to look at stopping chemotherapy as abandonment.” At another point in the interview, the same physician said, “The trap we fall into is, ‘OK, we're done. No more chemotherapy.’ ” Another oncologist said, “I don't want them to feel like, ‘Oh, you're on hospice, we're done with you.’ ”

Even aside from chemotherapy, physicians were aware that patients are sensitive to the physician's willingness to continue thinking and working on their behalf. One physician described “abandonment” as the patient saying: “Well, aren't you going to try for me any more, doctor?” Nurses felt similarly to physicians, both in noting continuity concerns and naming abandonment. For example, a nurse observed that “why hospice is such a bad thing is it comes on the heels of ‘OK, I’ve been abandoned essentially by my physician.’ ” Another nurse described a patient saying that “my doctor said there was nothing more he could do,” which she felt was “a huge abandonment thing.”

Physicians actively sought to “avoid the abandonment issue” with reassurance and continuity strategies. As one physician put it, “What patients need is to know that you care about them. That you care about their future and that you're there for them.” Another physician said, “I want patients to know that, when the going gets tough, I don't just bow out.” A physician described his strategy for continuity: “Keeping them coming in is important. I think they feel connected, and they don't feel like you’ve dropped them. And if you drop them that means you're only interested in treatment and you're not interested in them.”

Although patients and family caregivers worried about abandonment spoke of loss of continuity near the end of life, the actual experience of feeling abandoned included another dimension: lack of closure with their physician. A patient recalled that the physician was “very matter-of-fact—‘this is what you have, and this is what we need to do.’ And I wasn't ready for it. I just felt, ‘How cold’. . . . I’d been going to him for quite a while. I mean, he was a nice guy and everything, but I just felt so alone.” A family member recalled: “The last few days, I was like, ‘Where's [the doctor]?’ I thought maybe he would come over . . . and see him [participant's husband], but he did not. So that kind of shocked me a little bit. He left. I mean, he just disappeared. . . . we never saw him.”

The lack of closure after death came as a shock for others. Another family member noted in an interview before her husband's death that “Dr [name] is really good . . . I don't feel that he's given up on him [participant's husband]. . . . I haven't felt like we’ve reached a point where, OK, there's nothing we can do.” Yet after her husband's death, she said, “Honestly, the one thing that really bothered me is the fact that Dr [name] never called” after her husband was no longer able to come in to the office and was on hospice. “To me, it was almost like a slap in the face. I mean, I realize that the doctor is busy. He's got other patients. [crying]. But he knew [her husband] and me. And even though I knew that [her husband] was going to die, it wasn't easy to deal with, and it would’ve been nice just to hear from him, even if all he said was, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ ”

The positive effect of closure was evident for one family member in our sample, who received a phone call from the physician after the patient's death. The family member said, “I think it was really important that he [the physician] did call. . . . It just showed me that he cared and that [5-second silence] she just wasn't a . . . just wasn't a patient . . . that he treated and then she didn't make it, so, ‘Oh well.’ ” This family member experienced the physician's phone call as the completion of the therapeutic relationship.

Physicians reflected on the end of their relationships with patients and families, but framed the experience as lack of closure. One physician said, “I think it's probably more important for them [the family] than it is for me, in terms of what I recognize, but maybe there are things that I don't recognize, psychologically . . . it probably would be good for me to have better closure.” Another physician described the experience this way: “The hard part for me is that I really lose track of what's happening. And I have an underlying guilt that, somehow, I should still be more involved . . . because we develop these really deep relationships, up until the point the treatment stops. And then, I know there's just like this vacuum that's created when all of a sudden they're not seeing me any more.”

Physicians often did not see closure as a reason to see a patient as death approached: “It seemed almost like she was coming in to visit rather than to actually get any care.” Or, “I have patients that come to see me and I . . . don't really know why they're here. . . . I tell them, ‘I don't need to see you.’ ” Another physician described the issue this way: “I still remember that the week before he died, he told me he wanted to see me every week. . . . and I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh, God, my schedule's overflowing with people who actually need me to care for them, and he wants a social visit.’ ”

After death, physicians were sometimes unaware that family members experienced this lack of closure as abandonment. One physician said, “I was actually not here [ie, out of town] when he died. And then I thought, ‘Oh, I should really call [patient's spouse],’ and then, didn’t, because I was just too busy. And then, . . . by the time I got around to remembering, I felt guilty that I hadn't called her earlier, and I didn't know if it was appropriate. . . maybe it would just stir up emotional stuff if I did call . . . so I don't know.” Later in the interview, the physician said, “I don't know, in actuality, that things would be any better or any different if I did keep in touch.”

Physicians described logistical and personal barriers to closure. One physician framed the barrier as logistical: “There are only so many hours in the day, and I have, probably, at any one time, 10 to 20 patients on hospice. And if I started calling them up, there would be this problem and that problem and I would have to get in the middle of it. And quite frankly, it's care that's not reimbursed.” Another physician framed the barrier as personal. When asked if he said goodbye, one physician said, “When I know it's the last time I’m going to see someone, in the office, I . . . I try to do that. But it's a tough go, sometimes. I think that I’m not very good at that. I have a tough time, ’cause I don’t . . . sometimes I do cry, but I try not to. It's too disruptive to my day. . . . I sometimes am afraid that I’m going to break down, so I tend to gloss it over.”

In this study, we found that the professional value of nonabandonment at the end of life actually consists of 2 different elements: (1) providing continuity, of both expertise and the patient-physician relationship; and (2) facilitating closure of an important therapeutic relationship. At first glance, continuity and closure may seem mutually exclusive, but these elements reflect different needs occurring at different times in the dying process. Early on, patients and family caregivers fear that their physician, whose expertise and caring they have come to depend on, will become unavailable. Physicians are aware of this fear and attempt to address it with reassurance or continuity strategies. Yet, as death approaches, some patients and families may feel abandoned nonetheless because they lose the continuity of their physician's expertise or their relationship with that physician. Near death or afterward, they may also experience a lack of closure of that relationship. Most of these physicians are not consciously aware of having abandoned their patients. Instead, they report lack of closure or a feeling of unfinished business.

This study builds on prior work on nonabandonment and ties together other existing work on physician practices at the end of life. Using a bioethical framework, Quill and Cassel defined nonabandonment as “open-ended, long-term, caring commitment to joint problem-solving.”^6(p368) Certainly that definition, echoed in the Institute of Medicine's call for “continuous healing relationships,”^20(p8) echoes the continuity that our participants discussed. Our study provides empirical verification of continuity in 2 dimensions: the perceived need for access to physician expertise as well as the importance of continuity in a therapeutic relationship. In addition, our study adds another dimension to nonabandonment: the need for closure of the patient-family caregiver–physician relationship near or after the patient's death. This finding ties nonabandonment to limited literature that describes expert practices for physicians experiencing the loss of an important relationship with a patient. These practices include personal reflection,²¹ saying goodbye,²² writing a condolence letter,²³ and attending a funeral.²⁴ Our study suggests that these practices could contribute to nonabandonment.

Few other empirical studies of nonabandonment exist. A prior study of expressions of abandonment during family conferences in the intensive care unit found that families expressed concerns about abandonment of the patient in several different ways, including ensuring the patient's suffering is eased, ensuring the patient's end-of-life preferences are respected, and “letting go.”²⁵ To our knowledge, our study is the only empirical study that provides a prospective view of abandonment and nonabandonment using longitudinal interviews that began at the time the patient had advanced disease and observed patients and families through death and into the beginning of bereavement.

The significance of our study is that it provides empirical grounding for a central professional value. We note that Quill and Cassel favored the use of the term nonabandonment because alternatives did not “capture the responsibility for continuity and joint problem solving in the face of uncertainty.”^26(p475) As a bioethical framework, we respect their reasoning. Our empirical findings enrich and extend these concepts in ways that we did not expect. Specifically, our findings identify aspects of nonabandonment—continuity and closure—that can be acted on (Table 3). Reducing system barriers to continuity, for example, with nonhospice palliative care services may foster nonabandonment. Physician or interdisciplinary team communication involving nurses and other health care providers that facilitates continuity and closure may improve patient and family caregiver experiences. Finally, physicians can develop reflective skills that enable them to deal with loss and grief.

This study has limitations worth noting. First, the generalizability of our findings is limited for several reasons. The study occurred in one state and involved older patients with 1 of 2 life-limiting diagnoses who were treated mostly as outpatients. In addition, most patients had a family or friend caregiver, were living at home, and had a preexisting relationship with a physician. Furthermore, none of our patients was seen by a palliative care consultation service, although some of the patients who died during follow-up were seen by hospice before death. These are all characteristics that may limit generalizability to other groups of patients. Second, because the study was designed to understand patient-physician communication, we were unable to investigate the issue of closure for patient-nurse relationships. Because the vast majority of the physicians were men and nearly all the nurses are women, we are unable to comment on sex effects. Finally, our study was not originally designed to study nonabandonment so could have missed findings possibly observed if the study had focused specifically on this issue. On the other hand, asking participants to consent to a study about nonabandonment may have resulted in bias resulting from selective participation of patients willing to discuss the topic.

In summary, we found that the professional value of nonabandonment at the end of life consists of providing continuity of expertise and a therapeutic relationship as well as facilitating closure of that therapeutic relationship. Our aim in establishing an empirical frame for nonabandonment was to enable the development of interventions designed to improve this aspect of end-of-life care. Future studies are needed to determine whether intervention with clinicians, patients, or family members can prevent or address abandonment.

Correspondence: Anthony L. Back, MD, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, 825 Eastlake Ave E, Seattle, WA 98109 (tonyback@u.washington.edu).

Accepted for Publication: September 14, 2008.

Author Contributions: Drs Back and Curtis and Ms McCown had full access to all the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Study concept and design: Back, Engelberg, Reinke, Wenrich, McGrath, and Curtis. Acquisition of data: Back, Young, McCown, Engelberg, McGrath, and Curtis. Analysis and interpretation of data: Back, Young, McCown, Engelberg, Vig, Reinke, Wenrich, McGrath, and Curtis. Drafting of the manuscript: Back, Young, and Reinke. Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Back, Young, McCown, Engelberg, Vig, Reinke, Wenrich, McGrath, and Curtis. Statistical analysis: Engelberg and Reinke. Obtained funding: Engelberg, Wenrich, and Curtis. Administrative, technical, and material support: Young and McCown. Study supervision: Back, Engelberg, McGrath, and Curtis.

Financial Disclosure: None reported.

Funding/Support: This study was supported by grant RO1 NR008016 from the National Institute of Nursing Research.