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Dealing with Difficult Surrogates

Erring on the Side of Autonomy

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Book cover End-of-Life Communication in the ICU

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It is difficult to count the number of times house staff have paged me frantically to say that a moribund patient's family continues to desire “everything done” despite pleas for comfort measures. This situation usually occurs at three in the morning and frequently involves an elderly patient who has been transferred from a skilled nursing facility to the hospital for recurring decompensations. There is rarely evidence in the chart of any discussion regarding end-of-life care. A phone call to the relatives of the patient invariably yields the reply, “We want everything done.”

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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    David W. Crippen MD

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(2008). Dealing with Difficult Surrogates. In: Crippen, D.W. (eds) End-of-Life Communication in the ICU. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72966-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72966-4_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-72965-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-72966-4

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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