Objective To determine whether variables in physicians' backgrounds influenced their decision to forego resuscitating a patient they did not previously know.

Methods Questionnaire survey of a convenience sample of 204 physicians working in the departments of internal medicine, anaesthesiology and cardiology in 11 hospitals in Israel.

Results Twenty per cent of the participants had elected to forego resuscitating a patient they did not previously know without additional consultation. Physicians who had more frequently elected to forego resuscitation had practised medicine for more than 5 years (p=0.013), estimated the number of resuscitations they had performed as being higher (p=0.009), and perceived their experience in resuscitation as sufficient (p=0.001). The variable that predicted the outcome of always performing resuscitation in the logistic regression model was less than 5 years of experience in medicine (OR 0.227, 95% CI 0.065 to 0.793; p=0.02).

Conclusion Physicians' level of experience may affect the probability of a patient's receiving resuscitation, whereas the physicians' personal beliefs and values did not seem to affect this outcome.