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British Journal of Anaesthesia, 2002, Vol. 89, No. 5 683-686
© 2002 The Board of Management and Trustees of the British Journal of Anaesthesia

Editorial

Editorial I

Live and let die? A structured approach to decision-making about resuscitation

P. Levack

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Clinical decision-making is under attack. Such reports as ‘Cancer patient’s fury at doctor who "wrote her off" on hospital’s death ward’,1 and hospital found guilty,2 as ‘keeping Miss B alive was an unlawful act’, mean we could be forgiven for being confused (and defensive). We have taken off our white coats and first name terms are fashionable, yet the public and the profession are restive.

In the first case referred to above,1 a patient in her late sixties receiving chemotherapy for gastric cancer, was admitted to hospital with septicaemia. After treatment, she was ‘horrified’ to discover that ‘inappropriate for resuscitation’ had been written in her notes. ‘They were going to let me die,’ she is reported to have said. All the emotive elements were there—secrecy, paternalism, doctors yet again acting as gods, denial of choice, in an age when consumerism has itself become a god, and death itself—the real enemy. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

BMA/Resuscitation Council (UK)/RCN document (the Resuscitation document)

Resuscitation: clinical evidence

Decision-making: ethics

Decision-making: the law (UK)

Decision-making: the evidence

CPR in advanced illness

Summary


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