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Current Controversies in Prehospital Resuscitation of the Terminally Ill Patient

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

R. Jack Ayres Jr
R. Jack Ayres Jr
Affiliation:
The author heads a private, civil practice in Dallas, Texas. He also is a faculty member at theUniversity of Texas Health Science Center—Southwestern Medical School, the Director of the Emergency Legal Assistance Program at Parkland Hospital, and a national lecturer in legal issues involving emergency and prehospital care.
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Extract

Prehospital health-care providers regularly are called upon to assist terminally ill patients in residential or institutional, non-hospital settings such as nursing homes or hospices. Among the most crucial issues regarding such patients is whether they should be resuscitated. With alarming frequency, EMS providers are encountering vigorous and sometimes violent refusals of examination, treatment, and/or transportation from the terminally ill patient, members of the patient's family, or third persons ostensibly acting on the patient's behalf. Today, the prehospital emergency health-care provider repeatedly is faced with the legal and ethical questions that surround the issue of resuscitation and advanced life support.

Type
Collective Review
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 49 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1990

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