Take a look at this article: Nurse Refuses to Give CPR to Dying Woman
I'm not posting the article to avoid copyright infringement.
Basically, a nurse at a retirement facility encountered an elderly woman who was not breathing. Following company policy, she called 911 for assistance, but refused to perform CPR despite the begging of the 911 operator. The woman eventually died at the hospital.
I came across this article because I am researching Do Not Resuscitate (DNR), euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide issues for a college paper. I thought it would be interesting to get some reactions from the community here.
My wife, who is a LPN, has worked at several nursing and assisted living facilities. She had some great feedback:
I'd especially like to hear from Crake and any others in the medical field.
I'm not posting the article to avoid copyright infringement.
Basically, a nurse at a retirement facility encountered an elderly woman who was not breathing. Following company policy, she called 911 for assistance, but refused to perform CPR despite the begging of the 911 operator. The woman eventually died at the hospital.
I came across this article because I am researching Do Not Resuscitate (DNR), euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide issues for a college paper. I thought it would be interesting to get some reactions from the community here.
My wife, who is a LPN, has worked at several nursing and assisted living facilities. She had some great feedback:
Kel's Wife said:This was a nurse in a no-win situation obeying policies set in place by bad management decisions. If she ignored company policy and performed CPR the lady had a greater than 80% likelihood of not resuscitating and even if she did survive that, the injuries associated with correctly performed CPR are almost impossible to survive. So then she is wide open for a lawsuit for causing harm and suffering to the patient as well as losing her job and possibly her license for not following the clearly stated policies of her facility.
Deciding not to perform CPR, was an easier decision in the short term since it ensured that she would keep her job. Since she worked in a position it is quite likely that she was either not currently certified for CPR or had never performed it in a real-world setting. As a nurse performing CPR she would be held to a higher legal standard than the average person off of the street. Since CPR guidelines have changed dramatically in recent years, odds of her performing it correctly if she hadn't had a recent update in her training were unlikely. In that case, she is wide open to a lawsuit for medical malpractice and loss of licensure.
The other aspect of this story that is not often noted is that the women was not in a nursing home. She was in an independent living facility. This means that she was living in an apartment that did not provide nursing care. So this nurse was probably not even working at this facility but rather at the next-door nursing home or assisted care facilities. So this nurse had no previous relationship with this women who was not her patient. Also I looked at the facility website and all residents are encouraged to have DNR orders upon admission. So this nurse was faced with a stranger requiring CPR who most likely was DNR, the nurse would not have had access to this women's medical records. She was not allowed to do anything for this women other than to call 911 and she was being paid to care for an entirely different set of patients who she was having to ignore while dealing with this women who was not her patient and also very likely to cause her to lose her job of she intervened.
My 2 cents is that the nurse was not paid enough (no matter her wage) to work at a facility that would put her in such a position and she should have never accepted such a job in the first place.
I'd especially like to hear from Crake and any others in the medical field.