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Ethics Committees at Work: Do Not Resuscitate Orders in the Operating Room: The Birth of a Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Guy Micco  and
Neal H. Cohen
Guy Micco
Affiliation:
Chair of the Ethics Committee at Alta Bates Hospital, Berkeley, California and an associate clinical professor in the Health and Medical Sciences Program, University of California, Berkeley
Neal H. Cohen
Affiliation:
Professor of Anesthesia and Medicine, Vice Chairman, Department of Anesthesia, and Director of Critical Care Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
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Extract

The question of whether Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders should be sustained in the operating room was brought to our ethics committee by a pulmonologist and involved one of his patients for whom he serves as a primary care physician. His patient, a woman with chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) was electing, for comfort purposes, to have a hip pinning following a fracture. At the same time, she wished to have a DNR order covering her entire hospital stay. The anesthesiologist described her direction as “improper” and refused to participate in surgical procedures if DNR orders extended to the operating room. The patient refused to rescind the order during surgery. As a result, the surgery was canceled to the great chagrin of the patient.

Type
Ethics Committees at Work
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , Winter 1995 , pp. 103 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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