Introduction:

The Limitation of Therapeutic Effort (LTE) constitutes an act of care for those patients with irreversible diseases whose clinical course will not change and whose quality of life will not improve despite installed life support. The LTE seeks to reorient the measures of therapeutic accompaniment during the end of life; legislation and academic courses are already available on this topic.

Objective:

To characterize the knowledge and conceptual and legal clarity of the Hospital de San José (HSJ) health personnel on LTE.

Methods:

Cross-sectional descriptive study, with a self-prepared survey aimed at specialist doctors, resident doctors, head nurses, and nursing assistants of the HSJ, with 13 questions addressing the general concept of LTE, moral or legal conflicts, the difference between LTE and euthanasia or care hospice and training history. Conceptual clarity was established with more than 70 % of correct answers. Data were collected with a multiple-choice questionnaire via Google Forms, tabulated in Microsoft Excel®, and analyzed with Stata® via descriptive statistics.

Results:

Only 36 % of the respondents had conceptual and legal clarity about LTE; resident physicians had the greatest clarity. 82.3 % of the respondents differentiated LTE from euthanasia and 95.6 % LTE from palliative care. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed had no moral/legal conflict with LTE; 60 % and 70 % of respondents believe that suspending oxygen and mechanical ventilation does not make part of LTE. Finally, 78.9 % expressed not having received enough information on the subject.

Conclusions:

The personnel surveyed lack sufficient conceptual clarity about LTE, needing more education in this regard.