Question six: Since it is the patient who recognizes the values he/she wants in life and the kind of life he/she wants to lead, it is advisable for the patient to decide on his/he own whether to go for DNR or continue leading the life he/she is in with the poor health condition. Sometimes the court comes in to make decisions on patients life when it is found out that there is no improvement or nothing really being done by extending the patient’s life by ordering for a DNR.
In some cases, the relatives to the patient do decide on taking DNR to prevent the patient from suffering rather than to take away the patient’s life, although it may sound that DNR is meant to take away life. In the long run the patient will die but with a lot of pain than if a DNR was taken before, so people always want the best for their loved ones and opt for DNR. It is according to legal rights of the patient and ethically right too, that the patient should have a final say but only when still competent.
Question seven: Doctors know very well that even if a patient is resuscitated and have un treatable or incurable ailments, the patients condition would not change. Medically it is not justified since it will just be a waste of resources. The people of the society know very well that a patient under life saving interventions’ condition can never improve and that in the end, he/she will die. People consider resuscitating a patient as preventing an automatic death which will eventually come so quickly, and that it is more of making the patient suffer rather than let him/her die a natural peaceful death.
It does not make any sense to put effort in a situation someone knows very well that there is no way out except death. Its better to let the person die. It is therefore not ethically correct to resuscitate a patient whose condition will not change and the end result is known. Question eight: The reasons why patients termed as dying patients are always in a situation of dying state, is fear of pain and other problems of the health condition. When a patient is assisted in breathing or any other life saving interventions given, it is because the patient is not able to do that alone.
The patients will always try to take away their lives but are not able to because of the pain they experience before death comes. Patients therefore would opt to stay in a dying state for fear of feeling a lot of pain before their death even though they know they will eventually die (Keyes, 2007, p. 798).
References
Keyes, N. W. (2007). Approaches to medicine and Law in Bioethics and Evolution. A Biotechnology Bar Association committee (American). America: American B. Association.