What if, I wondered, the next time Priscilla had a respiratory arrest, the residents walked instead of running, got to the bedside a little too late, took their time drawing up the medications, or failed to get an intravenous or interosseous line placed? Would this be dishonest? Or illegal? Such an approach is at least imagined frequently enough to have earned a name: ‘slow code.’ In a slow code, doctors and nurses go through the motions of cardiopulmonary resuscitation but do so in a way that attempts to minimize the chances that resuscitation will be successful. The approach seems to defy all moral notions of honesty, truth telling and medical standards of care.
Nobody knows how common it is.
John D. Lantos, Do We Still Need Doctors?
Readings from my bioethics class. How far does a doctor’s ethical duties go? And to whom is their ultimate duty to?
