Aligning NBT/PIT Decisions to Laws & Policies (ASBH 2026)

On Saturday morning at ASBH 2026, be sure to catch "Increasing alignment of clinician decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment with hospital policy and state statute guidance."  

There is considerable variation in clinicians' approaches to decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment (LST) across US hospitals. This is especially true when these decisions involve ethically challenging scenarios (e.g. physiologic futility, potentially inappropriate treatment, unrepresented patients). While hospital policy and state statute guidance exists for clinicians making decisions in these scenarios, qualitative evidence suggests this guidance may have limited influence on clinician behavior.

This panel - composed of experts in palliative medicine, critical care, and clinical ethics, will address the influence of hospital policies and state statutes on clinician decisions to withhold or withdraw LST in ethically challenging scenarios. They will explore research that assesses the influence of hospital policies on clinician decisions to withhold or withdraw LST. This includes a recent multicenter study that identified that clinicians lacked detailed understanding about their hospitals' policies that address withholding or withdrawing LST and perceived these policies as having limited applicability to clinical practice. Subsequently, they will discuss important ethical and legal implications arising from lack of clinician behavior alignment with hospital policy and state statute

Learning Objectives:

After participating in this conference, attendees should be able to:

• Upon completion, participants will be able to describe variability in clinician decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment across the US.
• Upon completion, participants will be able to discuss important ethical and legal implications arising from lack of clinician behavior alignment with hospital policy and state statute guidance.
• Upon completion, participants will be able to implement targeted mechanisms to improve alignment of clinician behavior with their hospital policies and state statutes at their own institutions.