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Background: A variety of terms and attitudes surround palliative sedation (PS) with little research devoted to hospice and palliative care (HPC) clinicians' perceptions and experiences with PS. These factors may contribute to the wide variability in the reported prevalence of PS. Objective: This study was designed to better identify hospice and palliative care (HPC) clinician attitudes toward, and clinical experiences with palliative sedation (PS). Methods: A 32-question survey was distributed to members of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine ( n = 4678). The questions explored the language clinicians use for PS, and their experiences with PS. Results: Nine hundred thirty-six (20% response rate) responded to the survey. About 83.21% preferred the terminology of PS compared with other terms. A majority felt that PS is a bioethically appropriate treatment for refractory physical and nonphysical symptoms in dying patients. Most felt PS was not an appropriate term in clinical scenarios when sedation occurred as an unintended side effect from standard treatments. Hospice clinicians use PS more consistently and with less distress than nonhospice clinician respondents. Benzodiazepines (63.1%) and barbiturates (18.9%) are most commonly prescribed for PS. Conclusion: PS is the preferred term among HPC clinicians for the proportionate use of pharmacotherapies to intentionally lower awareness for refractory symptoms in dying patients. PS is a bioethically appropriate treatment for refractory symptoms in dying patients. However, there is a lack of clear agreement about what is included in PS and how the practice of PS should be best delivered in different clinical scenarios. Future efforts to investigate PS should focus on describing the clinical scenarios in which PS is utilized and on the level of intended sedation necessary, in an effort to better unify the practice of PS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: American Society of Anesthesiology Physical Status (ASA-PS) score; anesthesiology; enucleation; oncology; pediatric oncology; retinoblastoma EN American Society of Anesthesiology Physical Status (ASA-PS) score anesthesiology enucleation oncology pediatric oncology retinoblastoma 491 493 3 03/30/21 20210401 NES 210401 An American Society of Anesthesiology-Physical Status (ASA-PS) score is assigned to patients prior to undergoing anesthesia as a means of quantifying the impact of a patient's comorbidities. ASA-PS scores were summarized to create a single, summarized median (S SB M sb ) ASA-PS score for the pre-enucleation and the post-enucleation set of anesthetics for each patient. Pre-enucleation S SB M sb ASA-PS scores were compared with post-enucleation S SB M sb ASA-PS scores to determine if removal of localized cancer influenced ASA-PS assigning practices. [Extracted from the article]