Ethics in Critical Care Ethical Issues When Caring for a Pregnant Patient in the Intensive Care Unit

摘要

Anna is a 28-year-old woman who experienced an irreversible intracranial hemorrhage. She was 22 weeks pregnant with her second child at the time of the event. After being flown by helicopter from a rural town, she was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), where she received ventilatory and nutritional support. Before this event, Anna had been a medical/surgical nurse for 5 years. She had created an advance health care directive (AD), which lists her husband as her health care proxy and states that she would not want to be resuscitated or intubated in the event of an irreversible health condition; however, she had created that AD before she had children. Anna's health care team learned of her wishes, as stated in her AD, after administering life-sustaining treatment. In the ICU, Anna underwent further testing, which showed that she met the neurologic criteria for death (ie, she was legally dead).