Family Contests Hospital Decision Making COVID-19 Patient DNR

Older patients with COVID-19 (or their family) often consent to DNR. Massive advance care planning outreach facilitates such decisions. But even without consent (and even over objections), many hospital protocols permit clinicians to write DNR orders for these patients. That is what happened to Dimitrios Katsaros. His family would not consent to a DNR order. Hospital clinicians wrote one anyway. The patient died shortly thereafter. The family is angry. “It’s not worth 10 minutes of CPR to give him a chance?” “To be told you’re basically not worth the effort. Vets do more to save dogs than Northwestern said Jimmy was worth. That makes it that much more painful.”
Source: blog.bioethics.net - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Tags: Health Care syndicated Source Type: blogs