Families present during ressucitation ?

Another ethical debate is slowly gaining pace in the USA, and it just was the subject of an article by the French conservative paper, Le Figaro dated June 19, 2006. Since 1982, in fact, according to that article, religious chaplains and nurses have contributed to popularize the practice of allowing family members to assist the attempts of the caring team to resuscitate a member of their family. According to Dr. Jerome Groopman of the Beth Israël Deaconesses Hospital in Boston, quoted by Le Figaro, about half of all American hospitals allow this presence during resuscitation attempts. Various medical sources quoted by the article speak of possible adverse effects (shock, trauma) of viewing invasive resuscitation attempts by physicians.

Other physicians talk about the necessity of maintaining the confidentiality of the physician-patient relationship. Maybe the most interesting piece of information in this regard is that these opponents stress the serious consequences of resuscitation by heart massage, among others because there may be brain damage. Anecdotically, people familiar with the medical milieu knows that physicians and caring teams are trained to take decisions in function of their own appreciation of the “quality of life” of the patient after resuscitation, and not only according to the directives given them by the patient himself or his relatives. Hence the presence of relatives during the resuscitation attempts might also hamper the possibility of giving up too early on resuscitation.

Indeed, the problem of privacy (and incidentally of medical confidentiality) is present, but it must be assumed that in such circumstances, the interest of the patient for his medical confidentiality is superseded by his interest in having someone to supervise the work of the caring team.

Hence, having relatives present during medical attempts to save their family members could only be positive (with the exclusion, of course of actions which require a sterile environment, such as emergency operations).