A recent article from NY Times discusses the topic of advance directives and how physicians are likely to choose a “no code” status for themselves rather than heroic measures if faced with a terminal illness.

Here’s a link:  What doctors would choose and an excerpt:

Young doctors… 88.3 percent would choose a do-not-resuscitate or “no code” status. An allow-me-to-die status, in other words.  “Doctors see a lot,” Dr. Periyakoil told me later that day. Resuscitation attempts are so aggressive — likely to break an older patient’s ribs but unlikely to restore them to their previous state of health or function —that after witnessing several, “you know too much and you’re much more wary,” she said.

Perhaps readers here remember a much-circulated web essay by Dr. Ken Murray, a retired family practitioner, called “How Doctors Die.” He claimed that his fellow physicians largely reject the sort of high-tech care they routinely dispense to their patients.

Take-home message: Physicians frequently provide high-intensity heroic measures to many of their patients which they usually would reject for themselves.  Even in pediatrics, frequently parents demand that “everything be done” when many physicians would advise otherwise.