In the latest issue (March 13, 2007) of the CMAJ (journal of the Canadian Medical Association) a pediatric intensive care nurse from Edmonton, Alberta writes about what it is like to be left with the family on the last day of their child’s life.
For those of us that work in critical care we know that sometimes the difficult decision to forgo life-sustaining treatment must be made and no one tends to have a big a role to play in end of life care as the nurses do. This is a nice article about nursing a child through the end of life care process.
You can read the article in its entirety here: http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/176/6/817
Currently the Canadian ICU Collaborative is calling ICU Teams across Canada to take action in improving the quality of End of Life Care for critically ill patients. Check www.saferhealthcarenow.ca for more info.
