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A Critique of the New York State Do-Not-Resuscitate Law

Simeon Pollack, MD

Arch Intern Med. 1996;156(13):1369-1371.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

IN 1988 New York State passed legislation regulating the writing of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders. The legislation was intended to preserve and maximize patient autonomy. However, there have been 2 unintended consequences: futile resuscitation has become institutionalized and patients who want to protect themselves against the terror of approaching death by clinging to denial are deprived of this self-protective device, unless the physician fails to obey the law.

In 1982 a grand jury found that a New York City hospital had been using covert DNR orders and routinely excluding patients from decisions about their resuscitation.¹ A subsequent New York State task force was charged with drafting legislation to regulate the writing of DNR orders, in particular to fashion a law that preserved and maximized patient autonomy. To that end it proposed that exceptions to the discussion of a DNR order directly with the patient be narrowly limited. The law was . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Room 441 Mazer Albert Einstein College of Medicine 1300 Morris Park Ave Bronx, NY 10461

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