Table 2

List of n-grams from seed phrases (“ceiling of care”, “withdrawal of care”, “limit of care”, “palliative treatments only”, “palliative care only”, “end of life care”, “liverpool care pathway”, “not for intubation”, “not for itu”, “not for critical care”)

Not for cpr	Ceilings of care	Ward base	Family discussions
Ward based	Not for resuscitation	dnar not	Futility
Ward based ceiling of care	Ceiling of care	Escalation beyond	Organ donation
Escalation of care	Not for icu	dnacpr	Brainstem death
Not for itu	Not for niv	dnacpr and	Stem testing
Not for escalation	dnar and	dnar	Discussions with the family
Escalation and	Ceiling of treatment	Brainstem testing	Unsurvivable
Not for intubation	Resuscitation as	Withdrawal of intensive	Candidate for itu
Ward-based care only	Resusciation	Withdrawal of treatment	Ceilings of treatment
Not for resus	Palliation	Family discussion	Candidate for intubation

The acronyms identified from this approach were easily interpreted by an experienced clinician: “rx”=treatment; “eolc”=end of life care; “itu”=intensive therapy unit; “icu”=intensive care unit; “hdu”=high dependency unit; “dnacpr” for do not attempt cpr; “niv”=non-invasive ventilation.