In 1983, The Genesee Hospital, Rochester, NY, enacted a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) policy that was revised in 1988 because of complex state legislation. Using a retrospective chart review, we studied DNR ordering for all patients older than 79 years who died in the hospital during the 6 months before the policy and compared it with two 6-month intervals after the policy and three 6-month intervals after the law. The hospital policy was associated with an increase in explicit ordering of DNR from 21% in 1982 to 76% for the 2 years thereafter. A further nonsignificant increase to 84% was seen in the 3 years after the law. When cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was ordered, it was performed in 29% before the policy, 56% in the 2 years after, and 92% for the 3 years after the law. We reviewed all CPR attempts for 1988 and found that the overall survival rate for patients older than 79 years was 39% and probably was the result of careful patient selection. Our hospital policy was not adversely affected and may even have been enhanced by the New York State legislation. Despite this progress, we found that less than 25% of decisions about CPR or DNR were the result of informed decision making by patients themselves.
(Arch Intern Med. 1992;152:569-572)
Register and get free email Table of Contents alerts, saved searches, PowerPoint downloads, CME quizzes, and more
Subscribe for full-text access to content from 1998 forward and a host of useful features
Activate your current subscription (AMA members and current subscribers)
Purchase Online Access to this article for 24 hours
Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Yound Children and Association With Material Stature
Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early dhildhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal
Instructions
Thank you for submitting a comment on this article. It will be reviewed by JAMA Internal Medicine editors. You will be notified when your comment has been published. Comments should not exceed 500 words of text and 10 references.
Do not submit personal medical questions or information that could identify a specific patient, questions about a particular case, or general inquiries to an author. Only content that has not been published, posted, or submitted elsewhere should be submitted. By submitting this Comment, you and any coauthors transfer copyright to the journal if your Comment is posted.
* = Required Field
Disclosure of Any Conflicts of Interest* Indicate all relevant conflicts of interest of each author below, including all relevant financial interests, activities, and relationships within the past 3 years including, but not limited to, employment, affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, honoraria or payment, speakers’ bureaus, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, royalties, donation of medical equipment, or patents planned, pending, or issued. If all authors have none, check "No potential conflicts or relevant financial interests" in the box below. Please also indicate any funding received in support of this work. The information will be posted with your response.
Some tools below are only available to our subscribers or users with an online account.
Download citation file:
Web of Science® Times Cited: 29
Customize your page view by dragging & repositioning the boxes below.
More Listings atJAMACareerCenter.com >
and access these and other features:
Register Now
Enter your username and email address. We'll send you a link to reset your password.
Enter your username and email address. We'll send instructions on how to reset your password to the email address we have on record.
Need assistance?
Athens and Shibboleth are access management services that provide single sign-on to protected resources. They replace the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Athens or Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.