Five questions that bring the data, options, and decisions in this guide into a specific clinical situation. Each is paired with what a useful answer sounds like, and a brief note on why the question matters.
Population averages have limited value for individual decisions. Asking about the patient's specific clinical situation — not generic figures — produces information that can be acted on.
A useful answer will be a range rather than a single number, will acknowledge uncertainty, and will name the timeframe (days, weeks, months).
The choice between options is not abstract. Each one produces a different range of outcomes for this specific patient. Asking what each will accomplish — and not accomplish — forces the conversation onto concrete ground.
A useful answer separates "alive" from "alive and able to come home" from "alive and able to return to prior activities."
Every intervention has costs as well as benefits: time on machines, pain, disorientation, time away from home, financial impact, family caregiving demands. These are part of the decision, not separate from it.
A useful answer is honest about what daily life will look like under each option — not just whether the patient will survive.
Patients and families often want the medical team's recommendation but feel hesitant to ask. Asking directly gives the team explicit permission to share clinical judgment — which is often more useful than presenting all options neutrally and waiting for the patient to choose.
A useful answer ties the recommendation to the patient's stated values and clinical situation, rather than expressing a generic preference.
Code status decisions are not permanent. As the clinical situation evolves — improvement, decline, new diagnoses, time in the hospital — the right plan changes. Asking when the team plans to revisit the decision creates a built-in checkpoint and signals that updating the plan is normal, not a reversal.
A useful answer names a specific marker: a number of days, a clinical event, a response (or non-response) to treatment.
None of these questions require medical training to ask. They invite the medical team to share specific clinical judgment rather than offering options menu-style. They make space for honest answers about uncertainty, trade-offs, and recommendations — the components of a real shared decision.
The data, options, and tools elsewhere in this guide are inputs to this conversation. The conversation itself is where the decision happens.