Everyone, including attorneys, should be careful about the Living Wills and Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) clauses. Our relative who has been an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for 17 years said he would not sign a DNR because he believed that if he did he would allow the doctors to cause his death. We respected his decision but could not believe that the doctors who primarily preserve life would be so eager to end life. However, it turns out that he was right, a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) document gives a nursing home or doctor the go-ahead to determine when or if a person can get life-sustaining medical care.
When you sign a worksheet to place your loved one in a nursing home, it will tell you how humane a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) requirement is, not requiring cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and/or a defibrillator that could break your loved one’s ribs. However, they do not inform you of the extent of the damage to your loved ones if they lose their mental or physical capabilities unable to communicate their wishes for medical care, and uncaring people define that unwillingness to seek medical care means that they do not want medical care to extend their lives. Even though my wife had a power of attorney requesting medical care for her father, the nursing home staff ignored us and tried to keep our family alive.
It turns out that our relatives mark DNR while in a mental haze of infection. The doctor misdiagnosed, claiming that this patient’s daughter (my wife) was mentally ill for trying to honor her father’s last wishes. She could not adequately communicate with her father, so she had reservations about being punished for having his leg amputated without his consent which she thought was wise. This doctor had never met or spoken to my wife and had no psychiatric credentials that we are aware of. But when a doctor makes a note in a medical file, he has a lot of weight with the court even if the information is wrong. So the nursing home staff took the doctors’ point of view declaring my wife insane for trying to spare her father’s life and thus ruling her rights as a power of attorney and they would have legally annulled the life of her father who wanted to live.
Thus, a DNR can in some circumstances be more powerful than a power of attorney. I don’t think we are the only victims of this abuse of the DNR clause being used by some misguided people to prematurely devalue human life. The common practice in the hard sales arena of having family members sign an out-of-humanity DNR may be valid to some extent, but it can also be abused by people who believe they have the right to decide when a person will die.
It is recommended that you include a clause or add a handwritten note that a DNR does not give either party the right to refuse medical care for your loved one. A DNR has the potential to turn a doctor or nursing home staff into a psychopath and you should have reservations about signing such a document.