Physician Communication During Brain Death Conversations

Four Stanford clinicians and ethicists have published a useful article identifying language to use and language to avoid when discussing brain death. They identified multiple areas of agreement among expert physicians regarding best practices in communicating BD/DNC status to families.

Physicians concurred on avoiding the following language: 

1. using the phrase “life support" 
2. giving false hope of recovery to families
3. implying that the brain dead patient is suffering or in pain.

Physicians concurred on using the following language:

1. protocol-oriented language
2. framing the brain death examination as looking for signs of life
3. referring to the patient in past tense after brain death declaration