Ethical Issues In Critical Care Essay

543 Words3 Pages
The main point of this article is preventing or realizing an ethical issue in critical care settings. The author gives one scenario about a patient, their family and medical staff lagging in decision-making for the patient’s care. The author indicates the need for interventions from hospital staff when a family is having difficulty with ethical decision-making. The article addresses examples of patient and family level interventions during ethical issues, as well as, intervention plans for the unit-level. The article continues with a preventive ethnics team (consist of nurses, physicians, social workers and quality officer) gathering to review patient information to focus interventions for patient-family level and unit-level triggers to…show more content…
In the article it demonstrates a young man who sustained serious head injury in a construction site accident. The young man was the bread winner of the family. His wife was unable to meet with doctors during their rounds due to transportation issues and not having a babysitter at times for their young child. The young man wasn’t given a poor prognosis, but his wife didn’t want him off the ventilator as she believed this was the same as killing him. During the fourth week of the patient being in the hospital family meetings were suggested. The first family meeting held on the fifth week of care and at that time is when his wife understood the patient’s poor prognosis. At week six the patient died. The article illustrates in this situation staff should’ve implemented ethnical questions and interventions to assist with the wife’s frustration, home situation, and understanding of her husband’s prognosis. For example, if medical staff carried out better communication with the wife, then they would realize her home situation with transportation and babysitter for their child. Then the hospital may have given her a voucher for a taxi and allowed for hospital daycare for their child and as a result she could’ve been able to see doctors at rounds to ask questions. Communication is the key to understanding a person’s

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