How ICU clinicians document ‘Futility’: A 10-year analysis of critical care notes using natural language processing notes
Authors' conclusion
Use of futility was rare and stable across a decade of ICU notes. Semantic analysis indicates clinicians use futility in heterogeneous contexts.
Study context
- Population
- ICU notes written by clinicians for adult patients at a large hospital system, 2010 to 20202,460,169 notes
- Participants
- 9,912 participants
- Outcome
- Futility mentions in ICU notes and associated themes
Methodological detailsnatural language processing, neural network models, distributional semantic analysis, regression modeling
- Natural language processing
- Neural network models
- Distributional semantic analysis
- Regression modeling
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
- Annual average count of unique notes with futility mentions, per 100,000; unchanged from 2010 to 2020
- 137
- Themes identified among terms most associated with "futile" or "futility"
- 8
- Decision Making theme, annual average
- 18% (95% CI 16%-19%)
- Assessing, Prognosticating, and End-of-Life Outcomes theme, annual average (13%-16%)
- 15%
- Identifying Sentiments theme, annual average (10%-15%)
- 13%
- Recording Code Status theme, least represented in 2010
- 4%
- Recording Code Status theme in 2020, increased over time (P = 0.001)
- 9%
Original publication
How ICU clinicians document ‘Futility’: A 10-year analysis of critical care notes using natural language processing notes. J Crit Care. Published 23 March 2026. doi:10.
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