Let Me Die
By Steven P. Velasquez - NREMTP, MICP April 4, 2010 A team of paramedics are dispatched to a nursing home for a person with respiratory distress. Upon arrival, they find a BLS crew moving the patient over to their stretcher. The patient is barely breathing on their own and is showing signs of poor perfusion as evidenced by their mottled, diaphoretic skin, their rapid pulse and extremely labored breathing where they employ all their accessory muscles to breathe. The paramedics prepare their advanced airway equipment and instruct the EMT's to begin bag-mask ventilations with supplementary 02. The patient's chart has yet to make its way into the room, so nothing is known about the patient or their history. A nurse walks in and states "this patient is here for hospice and has a DNR." After a deep collective sigh, the paramedic uncrosses their eyes and withholds the next logical question ("then why are we here lady?"). The nurse vanishes from the room an...