It's hard to justify, in any situation, giving someone 1000 mcg up front. It's just not standard of care nor the norm.
Lemme ask this.
Say a sickler comes in that you've never taken care of. They say they need dilaudid 8 mg IV to control their pain. You have no reason to think they are lying about their sickle cell disease. But you've never seen them before. Would you give dilaudid 8 mg IV up front? Would it matter if they look like their in distress?
I would never give that much to anyone, ever. Even if I knew the patient. It's just too much. I would start at 2 mg IV q15 and titrate up. There is no substantive harm to someone's life (besides suffering) if they experience pain for an hour longer than normal. This sickler isn't at increased risk of dying.
Husel giving that 38 yo m with anoxic brain injury pushes of 1000 fentanyl, 10 dilaudid, and 10 versed is totally NOT standard of care. And I believe that quack-a-doodle expert witness that someone with that severe anoxic brain injury probably isn't in that much pain.
I don’t disagree with any of that.
And no I wouldn’t give anyone 8mg of dilaudid up front. But what if that same person from your example had acute chest s/p ECMO and the decision was made to turn ECMO off and go comfort care? Would you then?
I push a lot of fentanyl. And I’ve seen a wide range. I’ve had to narcan in order to wake up/emerge and extubate a pt after 100mcgs of fentanyl that was given during surgery. I fairly regularly push 250mcg of fentanyl intraop and let me tell you, you don’t always go to a backup rate with that dose if you’re on a support mode at the time.
So let me counter your question with a question;
Consider two scenarios (numbers made up but believable imo):
Dr. A gives 250mcg fentanyl for comfort care with terminal extubation and d/c of pressor support. 25% of patients continue to have discomfort, 73% exhibit decreased clinical indicators of pain, and 2% go apneic and arrest in minutes.
Dr. B gives 1000mcgs of fentanyl for same indication. 0% of patients show clinical signs of pain and 99.9% go apneic and arrest in minutes.
Who served the patient more? No dose of fentanyl above let’s say 100-150mcg of fentanyl is guaranteed not to produce apnea in 100% of patients. So regardless of the dose you’re giving I think it’s fair to say a couple percent of the time you are hastening death by the letter of the law.
So, aside from legal and standard of care arguments (which I understand and would follow myself for self preservation purposes) I don’t see a difference, and in fact I think under-dosing is the greater travesty to the pt.