Well, I don’t know how long you have been in the business, but even if you have been an RT for awhile, I have to ask you- Are you suggesting that you have a right to make such a decision for another? You have the right to decide another’s “quality” of life? How many family members have sought you out to ask you for your opinion? You are just doing a job and such patients are part and parcel of that job- you have no stake in the life or death of that person.
Are you one of those hotshots that stands around the bed referring to them as “gorks” or “gomers”? Do you suction them or draw an ABG without EVER talking to them? Are you ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that YOU know what is going on inside? Do you?
Do you have any idea how many nurses, RTs and doctors I have worked with who have absolutely NO sense of the humanity of the patients they deal with every day? You don’t have to be a sob-sister- you just have to share a bit of that humanity.
You know damn well that if a patient is under no sedation and if you take them off the vent and they don't even attempt to take one breath, that patient is dead. There is no way on this earth that they will ever recover.
The family can demand that the patient remain on the vent but you know and I know that the end will be the same. They do need time to adjust but this lawsuit was stupid. They will lose.
I have seen some hospital personal who are so immune to suffering and death. As for me deciding I have a right to make a decision for another, how do you get that from what I wrote. That is up to the doctors and family. Doctors can refuse to go above and beyond reasonable treatment and what the family was demanding in this case was just that.
The staff was negligent when the tube came out, resulting in this brain injury. They are liable for damages.