Ashford University
HCA 322 Health Care Ethics & Medical Law
Eugene Elliott
9/1/2014
Do Not Resuscitate The case study I choose is Scenario No. 2: DNR. DNR stands for Do Not Resuscitate. A DNR is a legal document in which health care teams will follow once you are faced with serious health problems or when you are at the end of life. This document lets you choose if you would like CPR or electric shock if your heart stops. Also, this document lets you decline any support if your heart stop or it will let you decide different medical measures that you would like. This document is very important to be looked over carefully by the patient as this piece of paper will try to save your life or it will let you go as you wish. It’s very important that the health care team gets your DNR form or that you have some type of medical jewelry on you so the medical team will be able to give you the best quality care possible. . “Previously physicians were only able to allow patients to die, now they could resuscitate them with relatively simple protocols and procedures” (Bishop, J., Brothers, K., Perry, J., & Ahmad, A. 2010). The history of the DNR started with CPR. CPR was first introduced in the 1960’s to save many people lives. CPR stands for Cardiopulmonary resuscitation; it is a lifesaving technique that is used when someone stops breathing. This technique involves chest compressions, mouth to mouth blow or electric shock. Every time someone would stop breathing the medical team would be call to perform CPR. That’s when the DNR came into play. In the 1980’s the DNR was introduced. This gave people the choice to not have CPR if they wished to not be saved. “The do-not-resuscitate order was beginning to be perceived as part of the patient’s right to claim back self-determination in the face of paternalistic doctors on an implicit quest for technologically mediated immortality” (Bishop, J., Brothers, K.,