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Brain Death Senario

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Brain Death Scenario
Andrea Farmer
Grand Canyon University: HLT 520
July 8, 2015

As an administrator I would need to take into consideration the patient’s autonomy, autonomy is recognizing an individual’s right to make his/her own decisions about what is best for them regarding their health care (Pozgar, 2012). The patient’s rights always should be considered before any decisions are made by any other family members. In this scenario it is clear that the patient is unable to make any decisions, the patient has suffered a serious brain damage, and although it is not complete brain death, we must determine how to proceed.
Unfortunately some of the family members have already began to express what the best course of action is for the patient. As an administrator, I must take into consideration what the ethical, legal, and medical issues are before we move forward. Once the patient is considered medically incompetent, the question is what is ethically correct in this case for one to declare the patient brain dead, or have brain damage. Thomas states, “If functions of the brain are irretrievably lost, the capacity of the human organism to remain integrated and self-sustaining in similarly lost, and at this point, according to the Commission, death has occurred” (P.102) This scenario does not meet the criteria for brain dead, so we cannot proceed with the term brain dead.
The patient is determined to have brain damage, so I feel we must determine if there is a possibility of total brain damage, in order to determine that Brugger discusses the Harvard Criteria of observable sings that are reliable indicators of total cerebral damage (Brugger, 2013). If any of these criteria are identified, it is declared to be death, and brain death is ruled out. These include, Unreceptivity; total unawareness to externally applied stimuli and inner need,

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