I mean, hospice knows roughly when someone is near death because when you remove care, the patient basically starves, and that generally follows a pretty clear progression.
It seems like the hard part is making sure people have had the conversation. If I'm over 80 years old and can't communicate or feed myself, I'm not expecting much of a recovery. I think a lot of people would acknowledge that if they were asked to think about it.
(of course there are lots of situations where a good recovery is pretty likely, but hopefully the doctors aren't waffling about what to do in those situations)
It seems like the hard part is making sure people have had the conversation. If I'm over 80 years old and can't communicate or feed myself, I'm not expecting much of a recovery. I think a lot of people would acknowledge that if they were asked to think about it.
(of course there are lots of situations where a good recovery is pretty likely, but hopefully the doctors aren't waffling about what to do in those situations)