It happens often in cases of brain death where organ donation is being contemplated. It’s hard to be the medical staff under these circumstances-blood pressure has to be maintained so that you don’t lose the organs, and sometimes keeping it up high enough is a real challenge. It is strange to consider the patient “dead” while still caring for their physical needs.
I will never forget my first patient that was in that situation. She was a beautiful young woman visiting the US for a conference of some kind when a car ran a red light and t-boned the car in which she was a passenger. I could not believe the callousness of the surgical resident who spoke to the young woman’s mother to tell her about her daughter’s accident and that she was brain dead. The patient was from South America, and the doctor didn’t even really consider that there might be a language barrier of any kind or consider the shock and grief of the moment before barreling in with the request for organ donation. I’ve often wondered if that doctor ever became a mother herself and had any kind of self reflection on that moment.