Every doctor faces this dilemma

What happens when family members insist on last-ditch remedies that a medical professional knows to be useless?

- Daniela Lamas

My patient's son took me aside late one evening to share a request.

I braced myself. My patient had been intubated with Covid-19 for weeks, her lungs growing stiffer each day. Her sons held vigil at the bedside, pausing only to critique the nurses and healthcare team. They didn't like the way the nurse turned their mother. They demanded yet another course of antiviral treatment for Covid-19.

As their mother's health worsened, their frustration escalated — and so did my unease.

The son pulled a pill bottle from his backpack. It was a mixture of herbs that he had ordered off the internet. He wanted me to give the supplement to his mother through her feeding tube, along with her other medications.

I looked it up online. There was no evidence that it would help his mother—in fact, it was on a list of medications deemed useless for the virus. At the same time, I suspected that my patient would not live through this hospitalization, and I wanted to heal the relationship between the hospital staff and her family.

I told him that I needed to confer with our pharmacist. But what I really needed was time to consider my response. If I acquiesced, it wouldn't be for medical reasons, but to try to connect with an angry and distrustful family. I had to ask myself: Is it okay to depart from the standard practices of medicine for the sake of building trust with patients and their families?

It's a question that is more relevant than ever in this political climate, amid increasing vaccine hesitancy and suspicion of medical professionals.