Compassionate End of Life Care in the ICU: Evaluating the Scalability, Transferability, Affordability, Sustainability and Value of the 3 Wishes Project

This study focuses on patients who are dying in the intensive care unit (ICU), their families and the clinicians who care for them. Dying in this setting can be impersonal, full of unwanted technology, and difficult for everyone involved. The 3 Wishes Project was designed to celebrate lives and support those left behind in grief, by clinicians asking about and carrying out at least 3 final wishes for dying patients and their families. Originally designed in one ICU in Hamilton, Canada, this project has recently been adopted in other cities. This 3-site study will focus on how the 3 Wishes Project is implemented and how it can be improved. The work will be a first step in the production of rigorous, persuasive evidence to help the expansion of this meaningful, low-technology, low-risk, low-cost program designed to bring peace to the final days of a critically ill patient’s life.