Join other healthcare professionals in exploring the ethical implications related to brain death, organ donation, and patient and family wishes. Carla Falco, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine will guide this discussion for the next Medical Ethics Forum.
Issues to be explored include
- How do you balance the patient's and family's wishes?
- Does the desire for organ donation affect the impetus to declare brain death?
- How do you approach situations where not all the diagnostic testing has been done to prove brain death?
- Which doctor should be the one to declare a patient brain dead?
- Is it ok to delay the neurology consult (and brain death declaration) to allow for family members to process what has happened and perhaps say goodbye? Delay organ transplantation?