The Stresses of Surrogate Decision-Making: Contributing Factors and Clinicians' Role in Mitigation.

The survey was exploratory and recruited through social media snowball sampling, so it may not represent all surrogate decision-makers. Most respondents were white, female, and had healthcare work experience, which makes the findings hard to apply to more diverse families. No respondent who selected Spanish completed the survey, so the results say little about Spanish-speaking surrogates. The survey instrument was not externally validated or psychometrically tested. Because many comparisons were made without correction, some reported associations could be false positives. The branched survey meant different numbers of respondents answered different items, and not all respondents completed the entire survey. The study reports associations from self-reported past experiences; it cannot show that any clinician behavior caused lower surrogate stress.

The supplied text describes the study as unfunded and does not report a funding source or conflicts-of-interest declaration. Data collection used REDCap hosted at New York Psychiatric Institute.

Do not read these findings as proof that being honest, respectful, or communicative reduces surrogate stress. This was an unvalidated survey of 108 mostly white, female surrogates recruited through social media, and it reports associations rather than tested effects.