Palliative care

“Jezewski suggested that critical care nurses are ‘culture brokers,’ bridging the complex cultural environment of the critical care unit between the physicians, patients, and families” (Buchman, 667). . . . We suggest that the surgeon is ideally trained to organize and sustain the rescue attempt. We suggest that the surgeon is poorly positioned to abort the rescue attempt when it has failed. The covenant between the surgeon and the patient as social and, at the end of life, spiritual beings demands comfort and dignity. Repeated fruitless attempts at physiological rescue delay and even deny these covenantal obligations” (671).