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)....
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Winter 2020
Ethics in Critical Care|
December 15 2020
Ethical Issues When Caring for a Pregnant Patient in the Intensive Care Unit
Kayla Tabari, MBE, RN;
Kayla Tabari, MBE, RN
Kayla Tabari is a PhD student at Oregon Health and Science University, 3555 SW US Veterans Hospital Rd, Portland, OR 97239 ([email protected]).
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Melissa Kurtz Uveges, PhD, MA, RN;
Melissa Kurtz Uveges, PhD, MA, RN
Department Editor
Melissa Kurtz Uveges is Assistant Professor, Connell School of Nursing, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts.
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Aimee Milliken, PhD, RN, HEC-C
Aimee Milliken, PhD, RN, HEC-C
Aimee Milliken is Interim Executive Director, Ethics Service, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
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AACN Adv Crit Care (2020) 31 (4): 425–430.
Citation
Kayla Tabari, Melissa Kurtz Uveges, Aimee Milliken; Ethical Issues When Caring for a Pregnant Patient in the Intensive Care Unit. AACN Adv Crit Care 15 December 2020; 31 (4): 425–430. doi: https://doi.org/10.4037/aacnacc2020953
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