Ethics

This week has been one of mixed productivity for studying. We had out ethics exam yesterday which was the first essay exam I've written in 4 years. There was a short answer section and two cases to analyze. The cases were as follows:

1. Elderly woman falls and breaks hip due to MI. Husband and daughter bring her in, she has respiratory failure (presumably put on a vent?). MD is discussing DNR order with family. Dad says no, daughter says sign DNR. Daughter says dad was diagnosed with dementia and that she is the decisional (a real word?) authority. What do you do? Sign DNR? What concerns need to be addressed?

2. Man cares for mom with Huntington's chorea. She dies a lingering death, and he proclaims to his friends that he doesn't want to go that way, he'd rather die. Man is married w/ children. He is depressed and an alcoholic, for which he sees a psychiatrist. He notices facial twitching and sees two neurologists, both of whom diagnose him with Huntington's. He visits his psychiatrist and asks for help committing suicide, which the psychiatrist refuses to do. The man goes home, ingests all of his anti-depressant medications, pins a note to his shirt saying he doesn't want to be rescusitated, then falls unconcious. His wife finds him, and drives him to the ER. You're the ER doc, what do you do?