I can see some logic in this.

As the article says she was barely breathing and that she died 'later' CPR would not have been appropiate and would have done more harm than good.
You don't perform CPR on someone who is breathing.

My mother was in a very similar situation to Nfk's mother with cancer which had spread into her brain and her pelvis and was brilliantly and kindly nursed by staff in a local hospital. At one point, when she got a urinary infection, a keen young out-of-hours doctor wanted to put her on antibiotics and send her to the bigger hospital 20 miles away, but the experienced nurses in the ward (who had discussed all this with the family) refused to take his advice, and my mother died peacefully a few days later. Giving her more active treatment would have been wrong from all sorts of angles, and I know she would have refused it had she been able to. Resources should be used to treat those who can benefit from it, whatever age they are. Nfk, . I hope your mother is as well looked-after as mine, and as pain-free.

I agree with flickety too. But I hope that I am allowed to die peacefully if I have a heart attack or some other kind of collapse when I'm in my late eighties, or even before. I wouldn't have wanted a non-interference approach when I was forty. This suggests that chronological age is one of the things that matter when we talk about dying and there's no use pretending it isn't.

bookdreamer I'm glad you're still here too.
bags I agree that medics should not 'strive officiously to keep alive' but I strongly agree with flicketyb that chronological age shouldn't be the only criterion on which clinical decision-making is based.

It says in the article that the OP posted, that residents of this community agree to the method that the nurse adopted when they go to live there. Sounds good to me.

On the one hand we have organisations pleading for laws to allow us to choose to die with dignity and naturally, and on the other hand we have people screaming that we have to do everything possible to delay natural death. I don't get it. I think we are indulging in wonky thinking.

But pogs, why is it so horrendous to let an eighty-seven year old die rather than 'pulling out all the stops' to save her?

That's good news bookdreamer and I'm very glad for you. I actually help teach CPR to primary school kids so don't think I'm against it. I just think we need to accept death when we are old perhaps a little more easily than we do.

Even the first aid kind can break ribs. I presume medics are unlikely to do the drastic kind on very old people who might well have several things wrong with them healthwise.

bags I was on the receiving end of CPR when I was just 40 (and luckily working in a Hospital). I just collapsed at my desk and they tried for 20 minutes to resuscitate me, and I'm happy to say they were very successful!!!! I then went on to have successful heart surgery and here I am 20 years later.

Have any of you heard the ACTUAL call to 911 from the NURSE making the call from the retirement home???

If you haven't try to. It has been on our TV news. The 911 operator is pleading with the nurse to get anybody, just give any passer by the phone. The nurse remains adament that she will not do CPR as it is her 'companies policy', she simply would not get anybody else to the phone. The 911 operator was saying to her, she will die if you don't help. All the nurse cared about was 'company policy' and obviously her job.

This has already caused a backlash in the USA and I think it will be a case of the 'systems' operated by retirement homes may be changed.

Good on the media I say, I don't care who, which paper or T.V channel reports these things.

annodomini Presumably a nurse would not do CPR inexpertly.

Bags There's CPR such as people learn in First Aid classes, mouth-to-mouth breathing, if necessary, and pressing down on the heart to the rhythm of Nellie the Elephant or Staying Alive, whichever you prefer. Then there is what qualified medics do which involves opening the chest and breaking ribs for direct heart massage – and yes, that's pretty brutal.

What about the 'decision' one's body has made that it can't keep going? Isn't that why people collapse? Especially in old age when things are, perfectly naturally, wearing out. Not giving CPR in such circumstances is not necessarily making an unnatural decision; it could be viewed as just letting a natural event happen without interfering.

The problem as I see it is that we are 'programmed' nowadays to interfere always to "save life". Death is part of life. Letting happen naturally (and collapse to non-breathing in old age would seem to fit that definition to me) is simply accepting the inevitable.

Besides, the nurse apparently did what she'd been trained to do. i.e. nothing wrong.

I am told that, if done inexpertly, CPR could break ribs, especially in a frail elderly person. The proprietors of that retirement home must have been wary of claims being made against them which is why they insisted on waiting for the paramedics.

My father lived to be 92, mentally alert, if failing slightly physically. Until three months before his death he was a vital part of his local community. An active committee memeber of three local organisations and well enough known for the church to be packed for his funeral and his local MP to attend.

How dare anyone make any unilateral decisison about someones place on this earth just because of their chronological age. Remember, the Queen will be 87 in a few months.

Medics I know say CPR is pretty brutal. I can't help thinking it is used to prevent death in such cases as the article mentions, rather than to preserve life (strange distinction perhaps to some people, but think about it) and that only because we are afraid of death.

I've also been informed by paramedics teaching me CPR that it is only successful in a minority of cases.

Difficult, difficult, difficult.

My choice would be to be allowed to die if I collapsed at that age.

If a person is old but compos mentis, surely it is not the right of relatives to decide that in the event of collapse that person should not be resuscitated without any prior consultation. At least not in the UK and certainly not in a retirement home.

nfk I sympathise with you about your mother's situation - but the woman in the article was in a retirement home, which is rather different from a hospital or nursing home.
There wasn't anything in the article to suggest that this lady was already in poor health and if we decide not to try to resuscitate people just because they're 87 we are going down a rather dangerous route.
CPR after all is only basic life-saving - something that anyone can learn - that's different from artificially prolonging someone's life through surgical intervention.

Ouch! I think it's difficult to make a judgement on this case from such a distance. There's no way we can know all the relevant details or the wishes of the lady who died.

I do see Frank's point though - my mum is now in a care home with a large malignant tumour sitting in her tummy, blocking blood vessels to her leg so she cannot walk and pressing on her bladder causing incontenence. At present, it's not giving her too much pain - but it will. If she were to collapse today, she would not want to be resuscitated.

The article doesn't say anything about whether the woman had to sell her house to pay for independent living or whether it is half owned by a son or daughter who still lives there. So why on earth were you reading it HUNTERF?

Don't you mean the equivalent of the Daily Mail, Jane...?

Anyway, the case was in the US, and their procedures and guidelines may be different to those in this country.

www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/04/california-woman-dies-after-nurse-refuses-to-perform-cpr/
I have blued it for you Frank
However, I don't agree with you.
From what I can make out of the article (and remember this is Fox News, the American equivalent of the Daily Express), the lady was in a retirement home, not a hospital or nursing home and it could be reasonably assumed that she had been in good health.
As a healthcare professional, and in the absence of a specific DNR notice, the nurse's ethical duty should have been to attempt CPR until the paramedics arrived. The decision to allow a patient to die should not be made by a single nurse acting alone and it appears that this nurse followed policy and protocol rather than acting as a professional person - echoes of Mid-Staffs?