A few years ago, a middle-aged prolife nurse friend of mine had a sudden cardiac arrest after her mother died but was resuscitated. She was taken to the same Catholic hospital where I received my nursing education. She wound up sedated and on a ventilator to help her breathe, along with a feeding tube. Her 24 year old son wanted all efforts made to save her and several of us volunteered to help if and when she returned home.

Instead and after a week or  two, her son was urged to remove her ventilator but, even then, she kept breathing even with the sedation medication used to control her tremors. But the son was horrified to see that her feeding tube was removed at the same time as the ventilator and against his wishes. The staff insisted that he agreed to this and that it was documented in the computer. He insisted he never agreed to this and demanded that the feeding tube be reinserted but the staff said they could not without a doctor’s order.

The son stayed for hours waiting for a doctor but the staff said the doctor was busy. A nurse from hospice came in and pushed for hospice but the son said he wanted to take his mother home eventually so he and the volunteers could care for her. The hospice nurse then told him that his mother was dying and her organs were failing.

I happened to be there at the time and, as a critical care nurse myself, I told the hospice nurse that I saw that my friend’s vital signs were normal and her kidneys were obviously functioning. I also questioned the dangerous increase in her sedation medication after her ventilator was removed because it could suppress her breathing. I was ignored. With a heavy heart, I lhad to leave to work my night nursing shift at another hospital but I told the son to call me if the doctor did not come.

The next morning, the son called me to tell me that the hospital just called to tell him his mother was dead.

He had stayed for several hours after I left but finally went home to get some sleep, thinking his mother was stable. He was devastated to later learn that his mother had been transferred to hospice against his wishes after he left. My friend then died a few hours later. She never got her a feeding tube or her sedation lowered or stopped. And she tragically died alone.

I still have nightmares about this.

THE “NEW” CATHOLIC MEDICAL ETHICS

While medically futile treatment has long been accepted as medically useless or gravely burdensome to the person, we now see a new bioethics with “quality of life”, economics, societal and family burdens, etc. included in the determination of medical futility.

This January, I was horrified to find that the influential Catholic magazine Commonweal published an article titled “Giving Doctors a Say-Futility and End-of-Life Ethics”  that also injects “respect for physicians as moral agents” to defend the rationale behind the (often secret) futility policies in Catholic hospitals  by citing cases like the Charlie Gard and Simon Crozier cases where medical care was removed from two infants with life-threatening conditions against the parents’ wishes.  In Charlie Gard’s case, the medical care was withdrawn by court order and in Simon Crozier’s case the medical care was withheld without the parents knowledge. Both boys died.

Tragically, the outrageous Simon Crosier case occurred in the same Catholic hospital where I once worked and where my daughter with Down Syndrome and a critical heart defect was made a Do Not Resuscitate behind my back and against my expressed wishes.

As a nurse and a mother, I was shocked by the Commonweal article but not surprised.

I have been writing about the deterioration in medical ethics even in Catholic institutions for many years.

In the Commonweal article, Michael Redinger (co-chair of the Program in Medical Ethics, Humanities at Western Michigan University , and Law} defends medical futility and criticizes the Simon’s Law passed in the Missouri legislature last year to prohibit “any health care facility or health care professional from instituting a do-not-resuscitate or similar order without the written or oral consent of at least one parent or legal guardian of a non-emancipated minor patient or resident”.  (Emphasis added)

Instead, Professor Redinger writes that “These efforts, collectively referred to as ‘Simon’s Law’ legislation, are well-intentioned but misguided”.

His Commonweal article concludes that:

“Given the coordinated efforts of Right to Life groups across the country and their ties to the Catholic Church, it is necessary to begin a broader conversation about the incompatibility of such laws with church teaching. Such a conversation would help guide individual Catholics at the end of life, and support Catholic bishops in their oversight of Catholic hospitals. Even better, it would relieve the medical staff at Catholic hospitals from the immense moral distress that comes from violating our oath to do no harm.” (Emphasis added)

 

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

After years of research and my own experiences with Catholic hospitals and staff, I have seen the tremendous influence of the Catholic Health Association which boasts that it’s health care ministry comprises “more than 600 hospitals and 1,600 long-term care and other health facilities in all 50 states”,  When I received my nursing education in a Catholic hospital in the late 1960s, rigorous ethics were an important part of our nursing education with “do no harm” to patients, report our mistakes, never lie, advocate for our patients regardless of age, socioeconomic status or condition, etc. incorporated as standard requirements. We happily took the Nightingale Pledge as our standard of excellence.

But now, as Catholic Health Association ethicists Fr. Patrick Norris and the late Fr. Kevin O’Rourke have stated in 2007 regarding futility :

“end-of-life decisions exemplify the principle of double effect, (wh)erein the withholding/withdrawing of life support is either morally good or neutral, the intention of the act being to remove either an ineffective or gravely burdensome treatment. The evil effect of the death is not a means to achieving the good effect (avoiding an inappropriate treatment), and, given appropriate circumstances, the good achieved is commensurate with the harm that occurs as a foreseen but unintended effect of a good action. The invocation of the principle of double effect in these cases properly distinguishes between physical causality and moral culpability.” (Emphasis added)

CONCLUSION

I have been called by many distraught relatives who have said they thought their loved one was “safe” in a Catholic hospital but saw problems. One case involved an older woman who had a stroke (cerebral vascular accident) and was in a coma and expected to imminently die but continued to live several days later with normal vital signs. The woman had a pro-life living will to reject life-sustaining treatment, including a feeding tube, if she had a “terminal event” and was imminently dying. The relative wanted to know if this was indeed a “terminal event”.

I asked if the woman was on a morphine infusion. She was and hadn’t seemed to be in pain. I explained that the sedation could account for her coma and suggested that they ask the doctor about trying to slow or stop the morphine to see.

The relative called back to say that the morphine was stopped and that the woman started to wake up and even seemed to recognize them. However, the Catholic chaplain told the woman’s sister who was her power of attorney for health care that her apparent response was only a reflex. The sister ordered the morphine turned back on.

The family was upset and considered legal action but decided that this would split the family so they gave up. Not surprisingly, the woman eventually died 2 weeks later.

After this case, I later wrote a blog “Living with ‘Living Wills’” about the little-known pitfalls of advance directives and how they could work against what a person wants.

The bottom line is that everyone must remain vigilant when they or a loved one becomes seriously ill, regardless of the hospital or institution. It is also important not to be afraid to ask questions.

There are also non-denominational, non-profit groups like Hospice Patients Alliance  and the Healthcare Advocacy and Leadership Organization (I am on the advisory board) that have much useful information and resources for patients, families and the public.

But without a change in policies and attitudes, those of us medical professionals who believe we should never cause or hasten death may become an endangered species as well as our medically vulnerable patients.