Brain Death Scenario Assignment: Medical Care Issues

Brain Death Scenario
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Ethical Issues
Serious brain damage usually results in loss of consciousness in a patient thereby resulting to mixed reactions especially from family members and thus associated with several ethical issues. Social and medical ethics usually conflict at such a case as shown by the brain-death scenario. What is expected to become moral before and after any form of treatment is communicated clearly between a patient and a doctor so that the patient is able to come up with independent decisions of how they desire their personal care to be executed (Zasler, Katz, & Zafonte, 2012). However, in the brain death scenario reported to me as the hospital administrator by the ICU unit director, the patient is likely to be unconscious due to the serious injury to their brain. This means that the patient is not expected to make decisions in this state as they cannot think and reason correctly nor talk. This leaves the medical professionals and close family members to make ethical decisions concerning the patient (Arciniegas, ‎ Zasler, & Vanderploeg, 2013). A patient suffering from serious brain damage presents a significant ethical challenge to the medical and nursing staff due to uncertainties in the diagnosis and prognosis, family reactions, the age of the patient, recurrent acute nature of the disease, which allows for minimal time to deliberate with the patient about end-of-life issues.
In most cases of serious brain injury, surrogates (especially close family members) are often expected to take charge and bring forth their interpretation (not always reliable) of how they think the unconscious brain damage patient would like to undergo treatment (Arciniegas, ‎ et al., 2013). A debate usually arises as shown by the scenario whether to withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment but may not always be applicable to a serious brain damage patient as they do not necessarily need invasive life support. However, the withdrawal of hydration and artificial feeding is considered to be relevant to a brain injury patient but significantly ethically controversial. From the case scenario, it can be seen that the decisions presented by the family members have some external motivation such as substantial inheritance and thus cannot be trusted. The issues are significantly subjective and emotive, and the views of the individuals (family members) depend on such factors as religion, and culture (Zasler et al., 2012).
Legal Issues
A medical practitioner is legally obligated to function, operate and administer decisions about the conditions of a brain damage patient based on medical diagnosis or even medical prognosis. Such determinations are executed after assessing the condition of the brain damage patient before the injury is treated and immediately after the administration of the treatment (Zasler et al., 2012). Handling legal issues linked with serious brain damage is a challenge to most people including medical practitioners. The nature of the brain injury scenario requires that it be dealt with from human and emotional perspective with the aim of understanding fully each and every unique situation. When the human brain suffers an injury, the location and ...