With an increased demand and an overall shortage of available organs to transplant, donation after cardiac death (DCD) has become a viable option during the last decade. Donation after brain death (DBD) has well-established protocols in adults and children; however DCD protocols still meet some resistance due to concerns about a negative end-of-life experience for a patient’s family and staff. Cowl and colleagues surveyed a multidisciplinary pediatric intensive care unit’s (PICU) staff regarding their acceptance of a protocol for DCD in comparison to DBD. They found the following:
The authors concluded that DCD had been fully integrated into their PICU with no reported differences in their acceptance of DCD from DBD.
—Rochele Armola,rn, msn, ccrn
See Article, pp 322–327
Frequently, patients placed in a step-down unit require close monitoring and surveillance. What tools are available that may help predict clinically unstable conditions...
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