A lot of people lately are wearing those yellow LiveStrong bracelets that help support the Lance Armstrong Foundation's efforts to fund cancer research. But the rumor going around is that if you do wear one of them, you better hope that you don't get into an accident and end up at the hospital, because the bracelets look exactly like the yellow wristbands that hospitals place on 'Do Not Resuscitate' patients. Apparently there is some truth to the rumor. Some hospitals do place yellow wristbands on DNR patients. However no one has ever been left to die because of a mix-up involving a LiveStrong bracelet and a DNR band. Nevertheless, some hospitals reportedly are taping over LiveStrong bracelets, just to be safe.
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"Crap, she's flatlining! Get the.. wait, is that..? *tugtug* Ok, it's a LiveStrong, fire up the paddles.*
Why don't they just take them off??
I don't know haw many hospitals use the color code described, but it's definitely not standard.
Of the several people I've known who most definitely were hopitalized with "Do not resuscitate" orders, none had yellow bracelets put on them by the hospital.
And the people in the emergency room who see these on a patient who is just brought in should know that the average person, and even the un-average person, does not go around wearing one of these.
Apparently these DNR bracelets are hospital issue, so there should never be an emergency room patient who is wearing one of the actual DNR bracelets.
At least that would be my guess.
"The hospitals, all associated with BayCare Health Systems, use the same color codes. Purple means the patient is at risk of falling down; red means the patient has allergies; and white is an identification bracelet.
Tampa General Hospital uses purple, not yellow, to identify people who don't want to be resuscitated. But hospital spokeswoman Ellen Fiss said she sympathizes with those who use yellow DNR bracelets."
This begs the question of why there isn't a standard across all hospitals, of course.
Also, the Live Strong organization is FOR PROFIT, so not all the proceeds go to cancer research anyways.
I got one of these things for Christmas from my college-student brother (he apparently bought a whole box of them.) For a while I used it as a cat collar but then the cat got too big.
I wouldn't be surprised at all that there are counterfeit ones out there, just as 99% of the "support the troops" sticker packages make no promises of any money going to support the troops.
High risk patients...on the verge of death...might have them on, but for the duration of a routine hospital stay...patients didn't normally have a plethora of bracelets on their arms.
It's a pretty good resource.