since it's trending it's important to understand what "Do Not Resuscitate" means especially as we may have to have this conversation with doctors in the future for our relatives or even ourselves. so here's a thread on DNACPR (Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation):

CPR is the use of chest compressions & electric shocks to the heart for when a person who has had a cardiac arrest (their heart has stopped beating - technically dead) so DNACPR does not mean stop all treatments or send the patient home or refuse admission or "euthanasia"

so a DNACPR form does not prevent any treatment other than chest compression & electric shocks. if patients don't have a DNACPR form in place, if they have a cardiac arrest, first responders will start chest compressions & put out an emergency call to summon the arrest team

so team of doctors will rush in. The patient will get chest compressions, which will break their ribs, get various tubes shoved down their throat, needles & may require drilling into the bone (intraosseous). obviously they will be given drugs to try to help restart the heart too

the success rate is small. it fails for more people than it works for. and for people who do not have an acutely reversible problem like a heart attack, hypothermia, salt imbalances, major trauma - it will fail. for elderly or frail people it will fail anyway too

CPR pumps the heart artificially, keeping oxygen circulating to vital organs so with acutely reversible problems, CPR might buy some time to fix the acute problem & so we would probably say that this chance is worth the trauma caused by doing it

where CPR wouldn't work, no doctor is obliged to provide a treatment that would not work. It is a medical decision. It is not the decision of the patient or their relative. They are not asked to sign the DNACPR form, it is the doctor who signs it

there's transparency as CPR decisions are discussed & communicated with the patient, or with their family if the patient doesn't have the mental capacity to understand it. this sometimes leads to the perception that families are being "asked to sign" the do not resuscitate form

in irreversible cardiac arrest, or Ordinary Dying, a DNACPR form allows doctors to say that when a patient's heart stops beating this means that they have died. so rhey will be protected from the indignity & brutality of a cardiac arrest team's arrival & resuscitation attempt

doctors can't prevent all death, so there are times when the best thing to do is to recognise that, to do what we can to make it a good comfortable death with minimum stress & pain