Hospitals go beyond "Do not resuscitate"

New Brunswick's largest health authority announced this week it will move from a do or do not resuscitate policy to one that gives patients more choices about end-of-life care, as hospital authorities nationwide increasingly push for Canadians to be clear about their wishes well before they're clinging to life. […] "I'm sure they've got good intentions in doing this, I'm sure they're wanting to be guided by the patient's wishes and I guess best interests," said Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University. "But I think we've got to be very careful to not reduce a very complex relationship that involves critical decision making to something that appears like a simple formula. I don't think that's right and I don't think that's going to work." She points to research that shows people make different decisions in hypothetical situations than in real ones.

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