Is DNR (do not resuscitate) a good idea?

Sorry, I tried / wanted to edit the grammer in my post but the button never showed up. So... to clearify my errors

1)My sister was given 2 - 12 months without treatment

2)Please add a "t" to the end of the word "even" so that you read it as "event"

3)remove the first "knowing" at the end of the 2nd paragraph

Thanks I feel better now. I am going to remember to "proof read" my post BEFORE I submit in the future since I am not given the option to "edit" them as I used to be.

Rags

Absolutely it is a good idea!!! It's a wonderful idea to have a poor terminally ill patient have that option. Performing aggressive CPR on someone, inserting an intubation tube... all of that can be very physically traumatic on a person's body. Not to mention, the trauma to a person, a family, of artificial ventilation... why go through all of that or put someone through all of that if there is no hope for recovery?

There is no right or wrong answer to this question (homework?) ... it is entirely dependent on the values and belief system of the individual patient.

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean is it a good idea to offerthe option of being a DNR? Heck yes!!!!! Otherwise, you would be coding every 90-year-old in the hospital! There are many people who would never make it through a code, so why put their bodies through all that, put the family through it, waste all the time and the money on it? It's one thing to be fairly young or healthy, but it's another to be 92 and dying. Why spend the little time you have left (at any age, whatever the condition might be) in the hospital on all these meds that make you sicker, missing out on everything you could have done?

If you mean should we make everyone with a terminal illness a DNR, no way. That's a personal decision. If auntie Mildred is 88 with COPD, pneumonia, and a PE, but she wants to be coded, code her. Do everythign you can to keep her alive if that is what she wants.

Bottom line, like many have said before, this should be the PT'S decision if at all possible. I hate it when someone is dying and suffering needlessly because we can't give them enough pain meds to make them comfortable without depressing their resps, all because the family can't let them go. What a terrible existence that would be. So the pt should be the one to decide, way before they get to the end. That's why we need to approach the subject, and/or press the docs to do the same. Some of them are great about it, and some of them...well, they don't like to bring it up.

this is not something that should be held in reserve for terminal or elderly patients
it starts with you, everyone of majority [18 most states] should make out a living will and put down your wishes and designate some one with backbone to see that your wishes are carried out
you never know when someone will come out of side street and leave you without enough brain to make a decision or to have a meanngful life..case in point that young man in the hulk hogan's son accident
and just as important you can put down 'EVERYTHING POSSIBLE BE DONE' at least this will make your wishes be done
telling your family, without anything in writing, frequently does not hold up in making a legal decision

I second what Chatsdale said. This is something every adult should think of ahead of time and execute the proper written document (living will or advanced directive depending on your state of residence) clearly outlining your wishes. Depending on age and circumstqances, a POLST is an additional step that might be considered in those areas where it is available.

I think discussing one's wishes in regards to end of life measures is a thing to be done AT ONCE!!
I cannot think of anything worse, watching someone get the "whole nine yards", intubation, CPR, vent, etc, who did NOT want it, but did not make his/her wishes known and the family can not get together and make the decision "We don't want to kill Grandma."
I agree physicians do a ****-poor job of making the point of DNR and explaining end of life extreme measures to people.
My family knows my wishes, my last surgery I had a witnessed Living Will drawn up and given to all my doctors and the hospital. I have told my husband and my kids that if they are given a prognosis of "no hope" and that I believe in my heart that is correct, I will let them go.
We had a "shirt-tail relative" (one that is so remotely related that they aren't really a relative anymore) whose husband had her coded nine times in eight months. She never left the hospital. The day she finally died, he was standing at the door yelling at the staff to get back in there and bring her back. I couldn't decide whether to be so angry with him for selfishly holding her here when she was too sick and miserable to know anything, or feel sorry for him for loving her too much to let her go. I finally decided that it was possible to have both emotions. But when he died a few years later, he made sure everyone knew he was a DNR -- and that kind of made me mad all over again!!!!
Kinda got OT there, but in the end, YES DNR is always a good choice for those who know there is no recovery, that prolonging existence is NOT the same as prolonging life.

Even my 13-year-old son was able to handle having this conversation. He died of AML in January of 2007. Just prior to TBI for SCT, the doctor mentioned a living will. Joseph wanted to know what that was, we talked about it, he thought about it and then calmly told us if there was no chance he would get well, to let him go. Months later, after four weeks on a ventilator for CMV pneumonitis, the day after his doctors gently suggested for the first time there was no hope, we made the decision to release him from his suffering. He passed within five minutes of the machines being turned off. It gives me peace to know we honored his wishes. It is unfortunate that more people cannot respect the desires of the dying. There IS such a thing as a good death. To me, DNR can be one part in allowing a good death to happen. His passing was peaceful, dignified and calm with all his nurses and his oncologist and critical care doctor at the bedside with his father and I, honoring his quiet transition rather than descending into frantic drug pushing, chest cracking chaos.

I am in favor of DNR in terminally ill patients if that is the patient's wish. Not everyone is able to accept one day they are going to die unfortunately.

I think the problem is that people can't accept that death is a stage of their lives, such as the beginning is birth, and the end is death. i coded an elderly man, and i can still feel the bones under my hands, doing compressions. we (medical field) need better education on the death process.

What do you think? I think you've gotten a fairly reasonable amount of responses here. Do you think it's a "good idea"? Or is it technology going above and beyond what's humane or natural? Do you think that every person should be treated to the full extent that technology has? Where do you draw the line? What do you tell your patients?

People die. Some before they should and no matter their code status, it's a tragedy.

So is this an ethics class assignment or what?

Blee