I think your point is well taken. It can seem that when you see a couple threads that it would perhaps raise attention levels. However, what this article (although quite clumsy in the writing) is about is the import of having these discussions and understanding what individual wishes are prior to the presence of a crisis.
The amount of guilt I see everyday a family struggling with around end of life decisions is heart wrenching. Equally as awful is knowing we are torturing someone with little chance of meaningful recovery. So what it becomes to those of us on this side of things is to know what our patient actually would want.
One thing CoVId may have improved is the fact that patients absolutely should have advocates for them of they are unable to express a their wishes. But it can go really sideways when that advocacy becomes not what the patient wants, but rather what the advocate believes or wants.
The fact is that these are discussions that happen everyday both before CoVId and now in the post CoVId world. And the facts are the facts. Specifically;
1. Prompt, high quality CPR for a patient who suffers cardiac arrest provides the best chance for meaningful recovery
2. Most bystander CPR is not high quality
3. In hospital cardiac arrest has a much reduced meaningful recovery rate as a function of the arrest likely being end of life due to disease rather than the initial event.
4. It is important to accurately communicate your wishes as a patient as it pertains to resuscitation and select advocate who will speak for you accurately if you become unable to express yourself.
I personally have a Health Care Proxy.
Pre Covid, I didn’t see the government and the medical industry as genocidal.
I see things differently today