It Takes a Village

“It’s not as simple as ‘you can save this life therefore you must.’ Usually we can do something but everything has a risk, a downside, a real price to pay for the person – pain, distress, or brain damage which leaves you living in a state you never wanted to be in. It may be that a treatment is probably not going to work, but there is a small chance it might work. If it seems likely the person will die even with life support treatment, what we may be doing is just deferring death by 5 days, 1 week, 2 weeks. So we speak to relatives to try and figure out ‘what would this person want us to do?’” Nazir, Critical Care Doctor