An emergency room physician in Montreal is urging families to have discussions in the event a family member is infected with the novel coronavirus and has to be put on a ventilator.
Dr. Mitch Shulman says people are forced to make those difficult decisions in the ER at a very tough time. “People can deteriorate very rapidly,” Shulman says. “When they come in and they’re short of breath and not really very with it and very sick and very scared, it’s not really a good time to sit there and say, ‘OK, you have 15 seconds to decide if I’m putting a tube in and taking over your breathing with a machine,'” the doctor said. [ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ] “I’m not anticipating this will be a problem, but