Refusal of Brain Death exam??

[PICNICRN]

I do not want to give away too much info just in case (HIPPA) but.... currently, we have a patient who had a positive brain death exam and the family has refused the second brain death of exam due to "cultural beliefs".

So now we have a patient without a time of death as of yet and a family who does not believe in brain death who wants "everything done"! YES we have ethics committe involved......................... It is very emotionally exhausting for all involved.

Unfortunately, I have dealt with brain death many times in my career, however, I've not been caught in this limbo before.... Just wondering if anyone has had a similar situation and how it was dealt with.

[diane227, LPN, RN]

First of all, your not caught in the middle. The family has made their decision. This is not uncommon in certain cultures, and although we don't agree with them, they have a right to decide what they want. I live near Seattle and we have a large Asian community here. I have seen only one Asian family make their family member a DNR. We are obligated to follow the families request, no matter what those requests are.

We have a man who come to see us who is 100 years old and his family will not make him a DNR. No member of his family will com forward and make that decision. And they always take him home for home care.

Recently we had a man from China who was doing very badly. The family hired a medical transport aircraft, two nurses, and a physician to transport him back to China so that he could die on home soil.

So that is how it goes. You have to respect their personal and religious preferences.

[blueheaven]

Samadams,

Thank you for your dissertation about working in a large hospital. I currently live and work in a "big city" Baltimore, MD to be exact with some of the biggest hospitals and trauma centers in the US. So there was no need for all that in your post. I fully understand the difference between large university hospitals and smaller community hospitals. As a matter of fact some of our patients (when I lived in the boonies:) were taken to large medical centers i.e Cincinnati childrens, Columbus childrens, Ohio State University Medical Center and occ. Cleveland Clinic etc. I've worked on units so busy that you didn't get time to pee etc. Since you assumed I knew nothing about the challenges of working in a large hospital-you assumed wrong. So I will end my part of this discussion on this thread.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

thanks picnicrn for the update to this story: patient death occurred. we hope that the an community were able to help provide you support and help educate other nurses who may be faced with similar situation.

thread closed as situation resolved.