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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
So Greg has a question and he asks, how long should the decision to withdraw life support be considered if you have a loved one in an induced coma in intensive care?
So to give you the short answer, Greg, it should never be considered to stop life support. The reality is if somebody is alive, why would you give up hope. If somebody can’t stay alive, if they are on life support, like mechanical ventilation, like inotropes or vasopressors, why should that even be considered as an option?
Well, as long as there’s life, there’s hope. And yes, there are very few situations where switching off life support can be considered, but only if there is an advanced care directly from the patient or from a family, a valid advanced care directive that the patient might have put down in writing that they don’t want to be on life support. That is really the only exception to that. It should not be a medical or nursing decision to stop life support, because at the end of the day, you’re killing a person, a human life.
So that’s the short version to your answer. We have helped many families through our consulting advocacy to stop intensive care units from stopping life support, because we know patient and families rights.
We know the clinical issues at hand in intensive care, because the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply that they don’t know what they don’t know. And if you don’t know what to look for, if you don’t know what questions you need to ask, and if you don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care, you’re pretty much fighting a losing battle.
So here at intensivecarehotline.com, we can successfully advocate and consult you if you have a loved one in intensive care and we can get results and outcomes for you that you wouldn’t have thought possible before.
That’s my tip for today. This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days. Take care.