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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
Now the quick tip today is about what is a silent DNR in intensive care? So most of you by now would know what a DNR or an NFR is in ICU. It stands for “Do Not Resuscitate or Not For Resuscitation” and it’s very dangerous and often cost lives if a DNR is issued. And if some of you have followed my blog for quite some time, you would know that the DNR or an NFR cannot be issued without your family or patient consent, even though hospitals and ICUs are trying to break that rule all the time.
But because they know they can’t really go against patient or family advice that they don’t want a DNR, there are ways for ICUs to work around it and that’s where the “silent DNR” comes in.
So a silent DNR basically means, yes on paper, your loved one is for full resuscitation for full treatment, but in the background, the ICU is actually only going at half steam and it’s not putting their best foot forward to get your loved one out of ICU alive.
So how does that show up? Well, it shows up with things like they’re not escalating treatment. They’re not giving inotropes or vasopressors if your loved one has a low blood pressure. They’re not treating any arrhythmias with the heart. They’re not treating any kidney failure. They’re not putting patients on dialysis and the list goes on. So how can you watch out for this and how can you find out?
Well, as you heard me say before, the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply that you don’t know what you don’t know. Families in intensive care don’t know what questions to ask. They don’t know what to look for and most importantly, they don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care and that’s where we can help.
We can find out very quickly if your loved one gets best care and treatment. Or if the ICU potentially has issued a “silent DNR”, that you can only find out if you have the insider knowledge that we have at intensive care hotline, where we understand intensive care inside out.
So that’s my quick tip for today. Watch out for silent DNR if you have a loved one in intensive care, check out intensivecarehotline.com and call us on one of the numbers at the top of the website, or to simply send me an email to [email protected] with your questions.
Also like this video, subscribe to my YouTube channel and comment below what questions you have.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days.