The Baffling Babble of Brain Injury.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-1-2022

Publication Title

Health Communication

Abstract

This paper presents a dialogue that demonstrates the baffling babble of brain injury, a phenomenon that can occur when physicians' medical in formation is either exceedingly vague or delivered through terminology that can be misinterpreted by surrogates. Brain babble is distinguished from more traditional forms of miscommunication in the clinical context because of the significant degree of clinical uncertainty, existential weight, and the ability to create lose-lose decisions from which clinicians experience moral distress after providing treatments the surrogates never would have requested had they a better understanding of their loved one's neurologic injury. The paper ends with some recommendations for discussing severe brain injury with surrogates.

Volume

37

Issue

2

First Page

255

Last Page

257

DOI

10.1080/10410236.2020.1832740

ISSN

1532-7027

PubMed ID

33019849

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