Brickbat: Do Not Ask

People with learning disabilities in the United Kingdom are being given "do not resuscitate" (DNR) orders in their medical records without the knowledge or consent of their families, despite National Health Service guidance requiring case-by-case decisions. Families told ITV News that hospitals routinely place DNRs on the records of their disabled relatives simply because of their disability, with no conversation about what the patient or their loved ones would actually want. One woman said her non-verbal sister has had a DNR added to her record between 15 and 20 times without explanation. Another family discovered a DNR only after requesting their sister's medical file following her death. The order cited "learning disability" as a reason not to attempt resuscitation. Health Secretary Wes Streeting called the practice "repugnant and immoral." 

 

Comments

[Vernon Depner]

Socialized medicine requires strong and independent death panels. There is no other way to control costs in a single-payer system.

[mad.casual]

Slight disagreement. There's "break your leg and sell you a crutch" grifting, there's "Oscillococcinum and cricket paste will fix you right up" levels of care, *and* there are more-or-less strong, independent death panels.

Death panels are just the final and most decisive from the patient/individual/family perspective.

[MollyGodiva]

Non-single payers have the same problem, but worse.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Look, do you want free healthcare or not?

[mad.casual]

I'm here to provide free healthcare and chew bubblegum... [cycles shotgun] and I have plenty of bubble gum.

[jimc5499]

Interesting play on a great movie line.

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

One of the not so hidden costs of socialized medicine.

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

Feature, not a bug.

[SQRLSY]

Now I am waiting for the asshole hypocrites who post here, telling the lesser beings to commit suicide right here on this forum, to wax SOOOOO indignant about all of this pro-death SHIT!!!

[Sailor1989]

I can't stand people on here telling others to kill themselves or to FOAD.

However, this is apples to oranges. You can't compare hateful, faceless, internet trolls telling someone (they will never meet) to harm themselves to the government abusing the publics trust and changing medical files without consent (which leads to citizens actually dying when they could be saved.)

[Longtobefree]

Coming soon to a Medicare plan near you - - - - - - -

(only without the disability limitation)

[Medulla Oblongata]

Just like Canada, where MAID is being offered for seemingly anything more serious than a hangnail.

[LIBtranslator]

If this Mendelian/Schutzstaffel approach is effective, the winnowing out of looters of both the lamprey and mystical populist persuasions ought eventually to be observable. How long has this been going on?

[Rossami]

And this is the model that so many Americans think we should emulate...

[MollyGodiva]

No, that is absurd. Putting DNR on records has nothing to do at all with single payer vs multipayer. I would bet the same thing happens in the US.

[Vernon Depner]

Cite?

[MollyGodiva]

WLOG.
Duh.
QED.

[Davy C]

hospitals routinely place DNRs on the records of their disabled relatives

It's not "hospitals" doing this; it's people. Manslaughter charges for anyone doing this if it results in someone not being resuscitated. And anyone above them who ordered them to do it just as guilty.

These days we have electronic records. It should be simple to find out who added a record; any competent system has an audit trail.

[jimc5499]

The level of systems that they use makes it easy to edit the audit trail. My Doctor is tied in to the local hospital system computer network. His laptop was messing up a few weeks ago and I asked to see it. It took me two minutes to figure out a password that would let me delete and reinstall the program that was the cause of the problem. The password I found was a System Administrator password and gave me free run of the system. I'm pretty good with computers and there are people who make me look like a total amateur (I work with some of them). What's two minutes for me, doesn't even make them blink.