Do Not Resuscitate Orders
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The environment surrounding Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) status for patients has been shaped by advancing technology and rising costs. These factors, combined with a greater freedom of choice for patients, have begun to pressure physicians regarding the moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding DNR orders. Conventional medical practitioners were trained to restore health through any means at their disposal. However, technology has advanced to the point where despite the quality of life, human beings can be kept alive artificially. Critics of DNR argue that patients and health care professional are too quick to choose DNR because of costs and a focus on the patient’s right to choose, “Everyone, from health care professionals to patients and their relatives, needs to be aware of the subtle ways in which legitimate concerns about costs and personal autonomy can erode care and even our regard for the sanctity of life” (Goerner, 1997, 21).There are many ethical considerations when it comes to DNR status. DNR status is typically instituted among heart and liver transplant patients, but it is also something patients can have written into a living will many years before it might become an issue. Further, intensive care unit patients often need resuscitated and, without having chosen DNR status before the need, relatives often are faced with the decision of adopting DNR status for their loved ones and doctors are often faced with having
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Behind the DNR status designation lies the theory that it is highly improbable in some critical cases that patients will be resuscitated so it is futile to apply medical technology and efforts to resuscitate them. Heart patients represent one of the groups whose members receive DNR status to a high degree. Statistics show that basically one in four heart patients chooses to adopt the DNR status, “of 936 heart patients at five hospitals around the country, sixty-nine percent wanted cardiopulmonary resuscitation, while 23 percent preferred do not resuscitate orders if they went into cardiac arrest” (Koenig, 1998, 1). Patients with congestive heart failure complicate the matter even more because they typically change their minds repeatedly when it comes to resuscitation orders. Nonetheless, this same study (Koenig, 1998, 1) showed a lack of communication between doctors and patients, including nearly one in four physicians who, when asked, gave the wrong answer regarding their patients resuscitation status, “Researchers asked the doctors of 750 of the 936 patients what they thought the patients preferred. In 24 percent of the 750 cases, the doctors were wrong, most of the time in cases where the patient did not want to be r
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Some common words found in the essay are:
DNR DNR, Critics DNR, Medical Association, Resuscitate DNR, dnr status, Dont Commonweal, Jack Kevorkians, DNR Conventional, Obviously DNR, MedSurg Nursing, health care, koenig 1998, heart patients, References Goerner, koenig 1998 1, nursing staff, quality life, goerner 1997, surrounding dnr, patients patients, medical community, dnr status patients, dnr status designation, goerner 1997 21, rosier 1997 371,
Approximate Word count = 1304
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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