Question

The family of a patient about to remove the patient from life support. What would be appropriate interventions ?

Answer 1

case manager, team leader, social worker and chaplain—met with the family to discuss the vent withdrawal process. They offered to have the meeting in the patient’s room since she was awake and aware enough to let her wishes be known, which was a great comfort to the family. On the day of vent withdrawal, the patient’s family—including her husband and children— gathered with the team members, a bereavement coordinator and the facility master social worker and a registered nurse to begin the process. The family held hands, hugged, looked at pictures, talked and cried. The patient died a little over an hour after extubation.

Removal of life support is a delicate decision, not to be entered into lightly.

Nurses need to be knowledgeable and able to communicate what they know about those consequences to patients, family members, and others on the health care team, leading to better decision making at this difficult time.

Doctors usually advise stopping life support when there is no hope for recovery -- your organs are no longer able to function on their own. Keeping the treatment going at that point may draw out the process of dying and may also be costly.

Choosing to remove life support usually means you'll die within hours or days. The timing depends on what treatment is stopped. People tend to stop breathing and die soon after a ventilator shuts off, though some do start breathing again on their own. If you're not getting in any fluids, you'll likely die within several days of your feeding tube removal. But you may survive for as long as 1 or 2 weeks.