Excerpt from: The New York Times (click for full article)
This might not have happened if the woman’s D.N.R. order had traveled with her when she was discharged from the hospital. But that didn’t happen, and staff members in the nursing home had no way of knowing what this patient’s wishes were (she was groggy and unable to say at that time) or whom they should contact to find out.
This is a distressingly common problem. D.N.R.’s signed in hospitals aren’t regularly transferred to skilled nursing facilities. So when crises arise (and this occurs often in frail, sick older patients) no one knows what to do, and shipping the patient off to the hospital becomes the default option.
That may seem like a sensible choice — after all, hospitals are where really sick people go to get better — but for nursing home patients it can have deleterious consequences.
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