Charlie Gard's parents give up legal battle over his life.

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**TheMeanDM**

d-usa wrote:
It is also worth to note that this same thing happens every day in hospitals around the world, including the US.

It's not even about "is this a waste of money" as it is often portrayed. It's about the ethical issue of "are you treating the patient" vs "are you treating the family and prolonging the suffering of the patient or keeping a corpse alive for their sake".

I've also taken care of way to many people that were the victims of family members who were emotionally unable to deal with the reality that was facing them. I've had to stand up to many family members who tried to bully the patient into making different decisions. I've had lawsuits threatened against me because I made sure the patient was able to use her voice, because the family was not ready for reality even though she was. It's hard enough to do when the patient is able to speak for him or herself. It's even harder to do when the patient does not have anybody speaking on his or her behalf. At some point someone needs to speak for the patient and think "what is best for him and what would he want".

Every article is talking about how hard this is for the parents, but the hard cold reality is that the emotional well being of the parents doesn't matter one single bit. It's the patient that matters and that's the only thing that matters. You don't do anything to a patient just because it will make a family member feel better. That's the problem in a lot of medicine.

There are a lot of bodies with zero quality of life who are suffering for years hooked up to machines while their body is slowly shutting down, for the simple reason that a family member is saying "I am not ready to deal with this reality yet and I'm not ready to have a dead parent". So we shrug our shoulders and say "sorry lady, gotta suffer because we don't want your daughter to be sad". Because the person who has a voice is using that voice for herself, while the patient remains voiceless.

It's easy to judge the actions of panels who make these decisions, but it's hard to actually be on them and make the decisions. The best thing that can come out of this is to realize that we need a system that is able to give a better voice to those without one, and to realize that family members are not the patient.

Fill out your dang Advanced Directives people!

As a fellow RN.....100% this all day long!!