Should Patient Bracelets Announce End-of-Life Choices?

Posted by Jacob Goldstein in the Wall Street Journal Health Blog Very sick patients can tell doctors in advance how they want to be cared for in moments when death may be approaching. Some patients want the medical team do everything possible to prolong life. Other patients give a “do not resuscitate” order that tells doctors not to take heroic measures if the patient is about to die. But an effort to alert hospital staff to patients’ end-of-life choices is running into trouble in New York City, the New York Times reports this morning. Everybody’s fine with, for example, the red bracelet that says “allergies,” alerting staff that a patient has an important allergy. But the purple bracelets that say DNR are a bit of a touchy subject. The Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals, has cited concerns about inadvertently announcing patients’ end-of-life choices to family and friends who may not have been consulted, the NYT says. “You need to strike a balance between the need for patient safety and accuracy and the whole privacy concern and sensitivity and compassion for the patient,” the leader of a group of long-term care providers told the Times.