 Hey guys! So today I wanted to talk about a sad topic. One of you guys suggested this idea for this video and I really really liked it, especially working in the ICU. It is so relevant and I want to talk about when life isn't worth living anymore. I want to talk about quality of life versus quantity of life and how, especially in the ICU setting, but really you can see this anywhere. Sometimes families keep their loved ones alive when, as a nurse, you just know that the patient would be in so much better of a place if they could just pass naturally. Of course, there are so many religious beliefs and personal beliefs when it comes to death, so I just want to talk more from the standpoint of, as a nurse sometimes you see patients who maybe they had a massive stroke, they can't talk, they can't feed themselves, they're sitting there drooling, they can't move any of their arms or legs and personally for me, in my personal beliefs, if that was me, I would not want to be kept alive on a ventilator, I would not want a feeding tube, I would not want any of those things because my quality of life has just vanished. Of course, there are different religious beliefs, again, I don't want to offend anyone by this video. There'll be families who want to do everything to keep their loved ones alive for the longest possible time, so they'll trape them or they'll give them a peg tube, they'll do these things to prolong their life by artificial measures, which don't get me wrong, we do that a lot in medicine, keeping people alive by artificial measures, but hopefully in the end they'll be back to their, the patient will be back to their baseline or near their baseline, they'll still be able to walk or talk or whatnot. But I want to talk about the emotions that kind of come along with that, like how you talk to families when you may not agree with their decisions. So as a nurse, you of course are an advocate for your patients and their well-being, but you also have to respect that everyone has different wishes and wants, and not everyone can just clearly see the end picture of what is going on. As a nurse, I try to just emotionally and physically be there for my patients, family members, when they're going through these tough times of like, should we withdraw care, should we give them a trading peg, should we do this, should we do that, and I don't necessarily offer my advice. You know, I've never ran into a situation where a family member has said, what would you do in this situation? I haven't run into that yet, I'm sure I will, but I do have a lot of times they'll be questioning themselves out loud like, should this, should, is this what we should be doing? This is a tough decision. And as my, as a nurse, my job is to validate those fears. And typically what I'll say is, this, this is a tough decision. This is the toughest decision that you've probably ever had to make. And you know, we're here as nurses, as doctors, to help you best make this decision, help inform you, help whatever we can. And ultimately, our goal is to keep your dad or your mom or your sister or your friend comfortable. Now keeping them comfortable doesn't mean we're taking the breathing tube out necessarily and you know, giving them comfort measures. Comfortable means like, even though you're going through this tough time, we're doing what we can for this patient to make sure that they're comfortable in the situation they're in. So I don't have any magical words of advice, so to speak. When you have family members who are dealing with death or dealing with prolonging a patient's life when you don't necessarily agree other than you just have to be there for them. When you're in an emotional time, all of your realistic reasoning just goes out the window. And it's really hard to logically think through situations when it's someone you care about so much. I did have someone that I work with, we were talking about this particular situation one time, and she said that when families, like when they're going to withdraw care and the family is maybe kind of on edge or you know, like struggling with it, she says, you know, death is a lot harder on the family members than it is on the person who's dying. And I really, truly think that that is, it's such a true statement. Dying is easier for the patients, especially when we can keep them comfortable than it is for the family members. So with that, I'm going to leave you guys, thank you for watching this video. Make sure you give it a thumbs up. Let me know in the comments below if you've dealt with dying or dealt with situations where you don't agree with the family keeping patients alive. And let me know your thoughts. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time. Bye.