Re: ICU stay before death common in the U.S. Originally Posted by geekgolightly 
...
In UK you can turn away patients from the ICU enacting some sort of futile care rule? And can you really put people on DNR status without the families permission?
There is no law or regulation in the US (that I'm aware of -- I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong) that requires physicians or hospitals to provide care they consider futile; and clients and families have the right to
decline any offered treatment they choose, but they can't make physicians or hospitals
provide care or treatment that isn't clinically indicated -- but everyone goes along because they're scared of getting sued. It's a sad situation.
Hospitals and physicians today (in the US)
could refuse to admit people to ICUs and refuse to code people (and refuse to do lots of other things) -- they just
don't.
)
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