Missouri medicine
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Many physicians struggle with death-telling in sudden death. Families can be negatively impacted by suboptimal death-telling. Appropriate preparation and education can make death notification less stressful for the physician and may help decrease the development of pathologic grief in the surviving family members that can occur when death is unexpected. ⋯ Despite the absence of return of spontaneous circulation, resuscitation efforts are prolonged while the ED social worker attempts to contact the patient's family to come to the ED. Finally, the resuscitation is terminated and the patient is pronounced dead. Several hours later the patient's elderly mother arrives and asks you: "What's going on with Mikey?"