rnmeridian

I recently found myself in a situation where a patient was intubated due to respiratory distress and was found on CT to have a huge subdural bleed. His wife expressed that the patient had always told her that he never wanted to be kept alive on a ventilator. The admitting physician came to the ER and told the family that she would extubate the patient and he would be moved to a room so that the family could freely come and go to the bedside until the time of his death, which could be seconds or hours. The patient was intubated in the ER. He lived approximately 10 minutes. We allowed the family to be at the bedside even when the tube was removed. I would not have been comfortable doing this without the physician present. Since there is a physician always on duty in the ER, I feel that they should be utilized in situations like this.