Misunderstanding death on a respirator.

As Tom Tomlinson's study indicates, there is considerable misunderstanding and confusion among physicians and nurses working in the area. Brain death is often not well-understood by healthcare professionals and hence inadequately explained to relatives, leaving them confused as to whether their loved-one is alive or dead. Whilst these healthcare professionals are using whole-brain death as the criterion of death, they have no clear understanding of the definition of death which underpins the brain-death criterion. Lack of this philosophical rationale makes the use of the brain-death criterion a mere technicality, rather than the expression of a well-grounded conceptual and ethical understanding. The other difficulty is that a brain-dead respirator patient just does not look dead. This appearance of life, Tomlinson suggests, can trigger deep emotions in caregivers and family members which will compound the intellectual perplexity already felt by them.