Maybe This Study Should Be Getting More Attention
Who was most likely to receive unilateral do-not-resuscitate orders during COVID's first wave?
What’s a unilateral do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order? It’s when doctors decide, without the patient’s or their family’s consent, to put an order in that patient’s chart not to resuscitate them in the event they need resuscitation. Meaning if their heart stops, no one will try to restart it.
Looking back on my med school and residency years, I can count on my hands the number of times this sort of decision was made as it tended only to be necessary when a patient has no family members to serve as substitute decision makers and where doctors had been unable to obtain directions from the patient themselves prior to their illness becoming so severe that they could not communicate.
During COVID’s frenetic first wave this decision was thrust upon doctors far too frequently. Depressingly it would appear that the decision of who was most likely to be given a unilateral DNR order was inequitable. This study, a retrospective analysis of these decisions made at two Chicago hospitals between April 2020 and April 2021 suggests that if you and your family were Spanish speaking your odds of receiving a unilateral DNR order was 2.8x higher.
In non-COVID stuff, a few weeks ago I wrote for Medscape on 10 ways physicians may undermine their patients’ weight management efforts.
Have a great weekend!
Thanks for bringing your Medscape article to my attention. It never showed up in my email notifications, despite having weight loss as a listed interest, grrr.