Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining care

Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining care


Decision-making conflicts


Withdrawing treatment is an area that often engenders conflict amongst healthcare professionals and families and between professionals and families. Allowing conflict and discussion around these issues allows the participants in the situation to raise their questions and worries. From our understanding of how we process these deep-felt anxieties around traumatic loss, we use this discourse as a process of constructing and voicing our thoughts in a verbal way to enable us to find a sense of meaning in the chaos in which we find ourselves. Ongoing discussion about the conflicts may help to develop a new sense of shared meaning in the experience of families and professionals in this situation and can lead to some shared decision-making about the best interests of the patient (Davidson and Simpson, 2006).


Withdrawing and withholding life-sustaining care


Some of the most emotive areas in end-of-life care involve decisions around withholding or withdrawing of care (Figure 53.1).


Goals of care

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Aug 29, 2017 | Posted by in NURSING | Comments Off on Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining care

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