[A CA Guy]

a DNR is an excellent way of insuring deficient and neglectful care.

Don't know what ghetto you have been watching that happening at, but I've never seen it and I've seen everything from the elderly with that to younger people in cancer wards.

If you die, they won't try extraordinary means to make you a brain dead member of the family on a machine breaking the family bank for no reason.

[TASMANIANRED]

I wouldn't call my hospital a ghetto. It was a state of the art's high tech private facility.

The one aspect that you can never regulate is the attitude of the nurses.

I never, ever saw anything less than ethical care out of the nurses in the boomer generation.

Despite all the flaws of the me generation, we were still raised with Religion, family and respect for life.

The kids born after the 1970's were raised with abortion being a right, Kevorkian being a celebrity, Right to Die legislation and God being a forbidden word in school.

In general they do not have the same regard for life.

A good many of them do not view humans as anything other than thinking animals.
They do have the assumption that a DNR means you are comfortable with your own death and are ready.

I had to chastise a young nurse in ICU for saying "What the hell is this DNR doing in my ICU."

If you are a DNR that does not have a family member present to run interference for you, Your call light will be answered less promptly, they will be slower to call the physician for changes in your status, Deterioration will be ignored longer.

I was a huge fan of DNR when I was younger because I had an idealistic vision of peoples right to self determination.

Real life is vastly different. The law of unintended consequences took over.

I am profoundly opposed to DNR unless you are are already down the road to dying.