A difficult, but necessary, topic:
For families facing the impending death of a loved one, few topics trigger more anguish than the Do Not Resuscitate order. The subject can be so painful that relatives and doctors wait too long, until the patient’s mental capacity wanes and the tough decision is left to family members. There is little ambiguity in a DNR order: Emergency medical staff must withhold CPR and other life-reviving treatments if the patient’s heart or breathing stops, allowing death.
Related posts:
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- Do not resuscitate or Allow natural death, does it make a difference?
- The cat who can predict death
- Buddhist beliefs and end-of-life care
- Sanjay Gupta on Anna Nicole Smith
- Are emergency physicians best served to staff urgent care centers?
- Discussing end-of-life care in the ICU and saving Medicare money
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{ 4 comments }
Selfish and heartless Boomers find this approach useful, when care of their parents begins to burden them.
Here’s an example of how ineffective “Central Authority”…Medicare/ HCFA regulations are. Every patient entering the hospital is required to have a “code status” recorded. Since it is a difficult discussion that takes time, tact, training even, AND is essentially uncompensated, the admissions clerk usually types in “patient could not signify”…and we all keep just doing the wrong thing because it’s easiest.
Sorry, I don’t think docs “unburden” themselves of patients, as Pei Loo suggests. But they do unburden difficult, awkward, unrewarding tasks. It is difficult to discuss deeply heald personal beliefs(Life/Death, god, etc) when you have to round on 20 pt.s and you haven’t met this person before, you’re covering for the weekend…
Perhaps Pei Loo would rather see people who have run out of beneficial medical options be subject to all manner of non-beneficial interventions that they do not wish.
The point of DNR is to define in advance what interventions have burden but little or no utility as judged by the patient. The article merely cited the problem that occurs when the decisions are deferred until the patient cannot participate and such decisions are left to surrogates. To assume that an entire generation of people born in the 40s through the 60s will handle the surrogacy poorly seems a bit of a stretch. Any data to support such an extraordinary claim?
“Any data to support such an extraordinary claim?
# posted by Gasman : 12:50 PM”
Have you visited a nursing home lately?
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