Usage of do-not-attempt-to-resuscitate orders in a Swedish community hospital - patient involvement, documentation and compliance

Background: To characterize patients dying in a community hospital with or without attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and to describe patient involvement in, documentation of, and compliance with decisions on resuscitation (Do-not-attempt-to-resuscitate orders; DNAR).

Methods: All patients who died in Kalmar County Hospital during January 1, 2016 until December 31, 2016 were included. All information from the patients' electronic chart was analysed.

Results: Of 660 patients (mean age 77.7 ± 12.1 years; range 21-101; median 79; 321 (48.6%) female), 30 (4.5%) were pronounced dead in the emergency department after out-of-hospital CPR. Of the remaining 630 patients a DNAR order had been documented in 558 patients (88.6%). Seventy had no DNAR order and 2 an explicit order to do CPR. In 43 of these 70 patients CPR was unsuccessfully attempted while the remaining 27 patients died without attempting CPR. In 2 of 558 (0.36%) patients CPR was attempted despite a DNAR order in place. In 412 patients (73.8%) the DNAR order had not been discussed with neither patient nor family/friends. Moreover, in 75 cases (13.4%) neither patient nor family/friends were even informed about the decision on code status.

Conclusions: In general, a large percentage of patients in our study had a DNAR order in place (88.6%). However, 27 patients (4.3%) died without CPR attempt or DNAR order. DNAR orders had not been discussed with the patient/surrogate in almost three fourths of the patients. Further work has to be done to elucidate the barriers to discussions of CPR decisions with the patient.