{"id":121771,"date":"2020-04-17T14:07:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T20:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=121771"},"modified":"2020-04-17T14:07:36","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T20:07:36","slug":"kenny-its-time-to-have-the-hard-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=121771","title":{"rendered":"Kenny: It\u2019s time to have the hard conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Headshot
Deborah Kenny<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

No one likes\nto talk about dying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one likes to talk about emergencies before they happen, either. No one wants to go to the hospital without family there in their most vulnerable time. No family member wants to get medical updates by phone or say goodbye via FaceTime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a nurse\nfor more than four decades, I can definitively say we\u2019ve never faced a crisis\nlike this in our lifetimes. Normally, in intensive care units or with those\nfacing other terminal illnesses, we can make end-of-life decisions with family.\nWe can do our best to keep someone comfortable until a loved one makes it to\nthe bedside to say \u201cI love you\u201d and hold one\u2019s hand for the final time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these\nare not normal circumstances. As a part of my career, I worked as an Army nurse.\nThough I never deployed, I spoke to nurses in field hospital emergency rooms\nwho sometimes had to make the call on who had the best chance of survival, and\nwho would be placed on a morphine drip with a corpsman at their side to make\ntheir final moments more comfortable. I spoke to nurses who were firm in their\nbelief that no one should die alone. As an ICU nurse, there were sometimes\npatients with no family members. I made it my mission that no patient would\never die alone. In these \u201cnot normal\u201d circumstances, I have every confidence\nthat nurses in the hospitals caring for COVID-19 patients whose family are not\nallowed to visit are just as compassionate in their care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\nmaking decisions on who gets the last ventilator is one that no one in health\ncare wants to make. We are driven to save lives and give our patients more\nbirthdays and more time with families. I work with a team of nurse ethicists who\ndiscuss these decisions at length and the angst among providers over having to\nmake them. Today, these discussions are no longer in the abstract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My spouse\nand I are in a higher-risk group. For me to leave him at the doorstep of a\nhospital and be told I couldn\u2019t go in would be devastating. We know we may be\ntriaged out of care in a dire situation. We have spoken about that scenario at\nlength. We made a hard decision to stay home together, each knowing the other\nmay get sick. We chose comfort over futility. Maybe, because we have made that\ndecision, someone else who has a better chance of survival can have the\nventilator we otherwise might have used, and the hospital\u2019s providers can save\nprecious time. That\u2019s why it\u2019s critical to have these conversations now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you don\u2019t know how to begin, you can access the website called \u201cThe Conversation Project<\/a>.\u201d  It has a downloadable starter kit to fill out and bring to your doctor or nurse practitioner. It has questions to help begin this tough conversation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m now part\nof a team of faculty who are preparing nurses to graduate and join the fight. I\nknow the resources it takes to care for the very sick. I know the heartbreak\nevery provider goes through when caring for someone who has little chance for\nsurvival, despite family members wanting to pull out all the stops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please talk\nnow. Please decide for yourselves how you want to handle this incredibly\nimportant decision, before it\u2019s made for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deborah\nKenny is an associate professor of nursing at the UCCS Helen and Arthur E.\nJohnson Beth-El College of Nursing and Health Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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