Florida mull how to ration ventilators

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. One can dream that this might set a precedent of sorts. We recently had a woman in the MICU for five long torturous months with end stage cancer. The origin was the uterus, but mets were to liver, lung and brain. There were lumps cropping up everywhere by the time all was said and done. levo was unreasonably high, dopamine was added very late in the game. Vented and sedated, TPN, horrific wounds which were cared for on a daily basis. For what??

The family threatened to sue us if we even mentioned DNR. Their insurance stopped paying at 60 days. We were completely stuck. When she finally went, her husband stopped the code after the third one that day.

Something HAS to be done about these situations.

A shortage of money/resources is definately the problem. We 'working class' are struggling to pay for our health insurance/medical care and the reason that the costs are so high is, in part, b/c of the futile medical care being placed on the terminally ill. Much of this care is not compensated for and the costs are passed on to those of us who 'can' pay.

as a nurse who lives and works in south florida--the problem is that so many people get put on vents unnecessarily to begin with.. no one wants to let grammy die in peace, she has to have a vent, a PEG and be on dialysis and maybe by the 3rd code of the day someone in the family will say "stop!"

the TV commercials are clouded completely with 1-800-ambulance-chaser and 1-800-who-can-i-sue and we have so many risk managers at my hospital it will make your head spin!

anywho, i don't understand the reasons why we don't actually have enough vents--i think the problem is more of not enough ICU bed space and qualified nursing staff. especially since it's winter, and people come to FL for the winter, and a percent of them end up in the hospital.

i am certaintly in no place to decide who is worthy of a vent... but if hospitals have to make the choice to keep a 95 year old who has end stage cancer and a 33 year old pregnant woman with the flu on a vent, one would hope they would make the choice to end the futile attempts to keep someone who is already suffering on a ventilator... i suppose that is what this article is saying?

From what current news releases are saying...it's the sector of the population under 24 who are most often being admitted to hsp-with the most serious symptoms. Wonder what sort of plan is in placet o increase the number of Pedi vents??

There is definitely always money for what the wealthy and powerful people of the world want to spend it on. I definitely disagree that there is any real lack of money or resources if the aforementioned definitely don't want there to be.

I don't know who has paid or will pay, quite honestly. They don't tell us that. We all assumed that the husband would declare bankruptcy as the bill would far exceed his income. He was by no means a wealthy man. They were both teachers.

Suffice to say, this was never a consideration for him.