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Modern medicine can keep a body alive long after meaningful recovery is possible, sacrificing quality of life.

Fewer than one in four adults who suffers from a cardiac arrest in the hospital survive to go home.

Families making end-of-life decisions without knowing a loved one's wishes carry lasting guilt and doubt.

Sharing your end of life wishes ahead of time is a gift that often brings your loved ones peace of mind.

You never really forget a code blue.

When you hear it called overhead on the hospital speakers, your stomach drops because it is every doctor's worst nightmare. It means a patient has stopped breathing or has gone into cardiac arrest. In that moment, every available resource races to the bedside in an effort to save a person's life.

As a new doctor, what I felt was fear. Although we had all been taught what to do, I wasn't confident yet.

Now, almost a decade later as an attending, an automatic reflex occurs as the Advanced Cardiac Life Support algorithm starts running through my head even before I reach the room. For those moments, the person in the bed becomes a body we are trying to restart with medications, chest compressions, and electricity to shock the heart back into rhythm. We often place a tube down the throat so a machine can breathe for them. There is no room for feelings in those minutes; we compartmentalize the fear and grief to focus on what needs to be done.

What happens after the code is another story. Medicine has so much to offer these days, so much technology that can keep the body going for a very long time. And yet we often have so little to offer the family when it comes to quality........

© Psychology Today