Prehospital emergency medical services’ ethical dilemma with do-not-resuscitate orders

OBJECTIVES: Our primary objectives were to estimate how frequently emergency medical technicians with defibrillation skills (EMT-Ds) are forced to deal with prehospital do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders, to assess their comfort in doing so, and to describe the prehospital care provided to patients with DNR orders in a system without a prehospital DNR policy (i.e., where resuscitation is mandatory). METHODS: Using Dillman methodology, the authors …