Very frequently I attend dying people by helping them with the sacraments and by listening to their concerns near the end of this life. One of the things I am becoming increasingly aware of is how often a patient's desire and instructions are being ignored, especially on the matter of the order, "Do Not Resuscitate." It seems that too many doctors and too many hospitals ignore this instruction because they do not want to have the death of a patient on their record, or so I am told.
Is it ego? "No one dies on my watch!" Or is it more a fear of being sued later for allowing a death to happen? Or is it a fear of getting a bad reputation for not doing the utmost, even in the most dire of circumstances. It seems we are heading in two opposite directions:
- either keep 'em alive no matter what the condition is, or what the cost is, or what the instructions of the patient are;
- or, let's euthanize 'em.
This is a social justice issue on many levels. The one aspect I want to deal with here is the radical injustice done to a dying person, who has accepted her upcoming death and has left instructions that she not be resuscitated, but is forced back into the dying process all over again because someone, or some hospital, is afraid to allow a death to happen (naturally) on their watch. Does this make any sense at all? Letting fear guide decisions makes for the worst patient care. In fact, fear-based decisions are usually not the best decisions at all on any matter.
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