Talking about frailty at dinner tonight, & also the general public’s understanding of CPR etc.

I still think some of the best judges of these issues were the surgeons I worked for as a house officer. At ten paces they were able to declare who would (or wouldn’t) survive surgery.

And for major surgery, you can perhaps substitute “a CPR attempt”.

Maybe we should liken an acute deterioration to “having a major operation”?

Would that make it easier to explain why we wouldn’t attempt “life saving” medical intervention?

Eg if it won’t work but will harm.

So they were quite astute... if they were sure that the person wouldn’t survive, they didn’t operate.

They were variable in their ability to communicate this in a sensitive fashion... but their judgement was impeccable.

Just like these days, we don’t always explain properly why we appear to be denying someone something.

Different era, some similarities.