TABLE 1.
Definitions Provided by Task Force Participants When Asked to Define “Contestation” of Brain Death/Death by Neurologic Criteria
| What is your definition of “contestation?” | “Family objects to either BD evaluation or removal of [the breathing tube] post declaration.”—P1 |
| “Once [the family] want legal counsel to actually do maneuvers to prevent completing the diagnosis or stopping support afterwards.”—P2 | |
| “The family disagreeing the child was brain dead and requiring legal counsel.”—P3 | |
| “It means somebody has put up some wall to prevent declaration or prevent withdrawal of the ventilator. That, to me, is contested. Not just simply someone in denial, or unhappy about it, but they’ve actually gone through legal hoops to put a barrier up.”—P4 | |
| “I believe the child meets brain death criteria and the family is, uh, strongly opposed or refusing to let me move forward with my examination or declaration.”—P5 | |
| “I know when we’ve been talking about contested in our context, we are thinking potentially cases that have gone to court, say, the Jahi McMath case. But for me it is the situation where, say, a family has refused, but not necessarily to the point of going to court.”—P8 | |
| “I think of the courts being involved, and lawyers, and the media. There are people who will talk about, I’m sure, these internally contested cases, which don’t involve those aspects. But when I am talking about this, that’s sort of what I’m thinking about.”—P11 | |
| “For me, it would be anything where there’s a barrier to following our documented protocols…anything that stops that process from happening that wasn’t our decision from a medical or healthcare standpoint.”—P12 | |
| “Family objects to performing test or to withdrawing organ sustaining treatment.”—P14 | |
| “Contested could be someone disagreeing with brain death, or it could be they’re actually taking legal action against it, [but] not necessarily the legal system is involved.”—P16 | |
| “In my mind, you have to have risk, or legal, or, or some kind of lawsuit. Those kinds of things.”—P17 |
BD = brain death.
Quotations are lightly edited for length. Participants are identified by letter and a number. Definitions that do not appear here were redundant to those provided or are included in the text of the article.