Hospital staff override comfort-care/hospice directives, forcing futile treatment on dying seniors and traumatizing families

Summary

Families of dying elderly patients report that even after clearly documenting 'comfort care only' or hospice wishes with ER staff, floor staff ignore those directives and hook the patient up to monitors, oxygen masks, and life-prolonging interventions. The result is panic, hallucinations, and unnecessary suffering in the patient's final days, plus profound guilt and anger for the family, who are treated as if they are 'murderers' for advocating for comfort. Care preferences are not reliably carried across care transitions, and families have no mechanism or authority to enforce documented wishes once the patient is admitted. Existing EHR flags and advance directives are routinely overridden by floor protocols and liability fears, leaving this a deeply painful, recurring, and essentially unsolved problem with no advocacy or enforcement tool available to families.