Compassion and Choices has touted a commentary from a blogger named Cynthia Yokey extolling hospice that, unfortunately, also sends a highly misleading message about acute medical treatment. From the quote cited in the C and C blog entry:
In the acute care system, you continue to receive aggressive treatment to the end of life, regardless of side effects that may shorten your life or make life hard to endure, and when you die heroic measures are used to try to bring you back to life. (For example, CPR is a heroic measure. The EMT or nurse who performs CPR generally breaks the sternum and some ribs in the person receiving it — when the recipient is osteoporotic, all of the ribs may be broken. Survival rates after resuscitation are in the 1.4 to 5 percent range.)
Wait a minute: This just isn’t true. You can receive those services if you want—unless Futile Care Theory becomes the law of the land. But you can also say no to CPR via a do not resuscitate order (DNR) or any other form of extraordinary or ordinary medical interventions and still remain in acute care. Thus, this quoted paragraph leaves the materially false impression that if one chooses to remain in acute care, you have to receive all efforts to save your life—like it or not.
The people at Compassion and Choices know that isn’t true. If they were going to tout the blog entry, they should have corrected the record. I wonder why they didn’t?
