Neuro ICU - Do you talk to brain-dead patients?

I think it has been said before, but I'll say it again as it is what I believe. Even with todays technology, no-one can say for certain what "brain dead" or unresponsive patients can and cannot hear, which is why I always chat with any patient, responsive or unresponsive, let them know what the weathers doing, what day it is etc. Maybe future advances in science will reveal those patients who are "brain-dead" can hear, who knows.

As for talking to those patients who have sadly passed away...yes I do it, it's a coping mechanism and enables me to cope with their death and also who knows whether the soul/spirit can hear people? Maybe, maybe not but who knows anything for definite in this day and age?

If it was me that was the patient, and I could not communicate or outwardly respond in any way, I'm sure I would be seriously anxious (meds notwithstanding) and probably a bit ticked off.

If someone talked to me like I mattered, if someone reassured me that they cared, that might be all I could get. And compared to nothing, that would be quite a lot.

For me as care giver, who am I to say where consciousness ends? The fact is we have "known" so much that has turned out to be wrong. Makes me think of that old starfish washed up on the beach story: I cannot save them all and maybe it doesn't matter on the grand scale one way or another, but to the one I am helping, to that one it means quite a lot.

If I care about my patients, then while they are in my care, nothing matters except how I treat them.

To me it is not about science at all. But it is hugely about nursing.

I do think you are missing some points here, NeuroICURN. We have asserted that just because someone is "brain dead" according to whatever technology there might be, now or at some point in the future, this does not mean that there is absolute certainty that the individual is not aware, at some level.

That is what I was responding to and what others have shared here. Please let's try to keep the tone of this thread on an "up beat."

Like I said in the portion of my post I quoted above (emphasis added), it is hugely about nursing.

I was rereading previous posts and, after my father was declared "brain dead" by the neurosurgeon, the vultures (nurses) swarmed my mother with requests to eliminate the ventilator, that we are making him suffer, and that we needed to get a grip because he was soon to be dead, All before the neurosurgeon had actually done any tests to prove he was unconsious and not brain dead. Yes, i know i called the nurses vultures, even though i am a nurse, but to me at that time, that is what they were and it felt like all they wanted was the bed free. I realize now that dr. shouldn 't have spoke to us about brain death before doing the tests, and I think the nurses should have taken our concerns about my father when we said He moves his head back and forth everytime we talk to him and they say, oh you are just imagining things because he can't do that. Some hospitals are more like bandaid stations. And my father said after recovery to "never send me to that hospital again". So i'm wondering what else besides the family talking to him, did he hear while being unconsious?????