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. 2020 Nov 25;15:12. doi: 10.1186/s13010-020-00096-1

Table 1.

PICOS, inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria applied to literature search

Inclusion criteria Exclusion criteria
Population • Physicians • Main focus on other health professionals such as:
 ° Nurses
 ° Allied health workers
 ° Healthcare support staff
• Main focus on patients, caregiver, family or friends
• Students from health professions such as:
 ° Medical students
 ° Nursing students
 ° Allied health students
Intervention / Exposure • Being involved in the care of dying patients in the adult ICU • No involvement in care of dying patients
 ° No clearly defined patient care experience (e.g. study just explores attitudes to death/ palliative care)
 ° Patient population not dying patients (incl. “geriatrics”, patients without specification that they are dying)
 ° Physician assisted suicide/ medical assistance in death/ suicide
• Personal experience of death of family/ friend
• Non-adult ICUs such as:
 ° Paediatric ICUs
 ° Neonatal ICUs
Comparison
 Outcome measures

• Impact on doctors

° Emotional

° Psychological

° Behavioural

° Physical

 Study design

• English language

• Time of publication between 1990 and 2019

• No restriction on study design (qualitative, quantitative, mixed)

• No restriction on geographical location of study or publication

• Grey Literature, electronic and print information not controlled by commercial publishing

• Narrative literature reviews without methodology

• Case reports and series, commentaries, editorials, and perspectives

• Non-English publications without English translation

• Unable to retrieve full article