[brian]

Here are the results of last months survey question
Have you ever consulted with your facility's ethics committee about a patient? :



Please feel free to read and post any comments that you have right here in this discussion thread by clicking the "Post Reply" button.

Thanks

[Q.]

I haven't personally, but I've known of a situation here at our Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in which a child needed a life-saving treatment, such as a bone marrow transplant, and the parents couldn't agree. One consented and the other didn't. It went to the Ethics Committee then.
Not sure of the outcome.

[Stargazer]

I answered "no," but I can think of at least one case where I should have.

[emily_mom]

No, but I know of other nurses in my dept that have. It had something to do with a newborn and conflicting decisions regarding tx.

Kristy

[mamabear]

What ethics committee?

[renerian]

Yes I have for several patients in the home health arena. I also requested a meeting at the hospital where my mother was dying, a horrible death, to remove the life prolonging IVs and blood (she has 8 units PRBC, 12 Units FFP and many units RDPs. After a heated half hour discussion and the Dr. saying he would not call the Ethics committee on a Sunday, He did what we wanted. She died in less than 20 minutes.

renerian

[cheerfuldoer]

My response was....No, but, if I had to, I wouldn't hesitate to do so.

[jemb]

Yes, at my former place of employment. I knew one of our patients from the oncology floor where I worked. One evening I was floated to another floor and found this gentleman rapidly deteriorating after being admitted several days prior. He recognized me, and said that he thought he was going to die soon and reminded me that he did not "anything heroic done when I quit breathing". He had been DNR on the oncology floor, but his chart indicated that he had been made a full code with this admission. I called his doc, who informed me, "I don't make any of my patients DNR until after they code the first time!" So I went to the ethics committee. It took two days to get the DNR on his chart, and -no exagerration here- the man died within an hour of his DNR status becoming official.

[canoehead]

I have, and the ethics committee spent about an hour, it was a great discussion, but the doc just nodded, and then went off and wrote the same orders he'd planned on to begin with.

[sjsap]

When I worked at a large Boston area hospital, I served on the first patient ethics committee at the institution which was started back in the 80s. Back then it was mainly nurses on the committee, but it was started by the CEO- an MD who took interest because of the complexity of our usual patients who had multi-system disease. I found it to be a very helpful experience, because it gave me support with the cases in which I questioned "what are we doing here" or "why????"
I got a lot out of it because I was able to talk with other health professionals (the latest version of the ethics committee was chaired by a very thoughtful and approachable MD)about the tough issues, how to handle what is happening at present, or how to deal with a situation that was uncomfortable for all. The ethical dilemmas we all face are a little easier if you can discuss them openly. I now utilize the experience and information in my current practice of homecare- issues of quality of life, benficence, autonomy, etc. all play a large role in home care.