CPR: Analysis of "Sudden Death Term Paper

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The techniques spin a tale of heroism, medical magic to overcome the adversity of death..." (5).

Indeed, the author intends his readers to understand that what results from the belief of the myth of CPR is the continuing norm of tolerating people's belief that CPR can save lives and the last hours of the patient on earth are spent with the hospital staff rather than his/her family and/or relatives. What happens is that death is "celebrated" impersonally. The process of commemorating death in a meaningful manner is replaced by the hope that CPR and other medical procedures can prevent sudden deaths. As explicated in "Sudden death," CPR is "an example of an excessively technology-driven medicine...advanced medical technology has corrupted the dying experience, making it somehow less 'natural'" (7). Apart from the absence of the meaningful celebration of death, the pressure to rely on the 'power' of CPR to revive a patient to life develops to the hospital culture that death must be spent on subjecting the patient to medical procedures and tests despite the fact that the staff or personnel cannot do anything more to save the patient's life. Thus, there is pressure on the part of the hospital staff, which leads them to further perpetuate the myth of CPR simply because the patient's family or loved-ones believed in its potential to save lives.
These accounts of hospital life and occurrence of deaths despite the use of CPR reinforce the critical stance that Timmerman assumes at the beginning of his book, and is argued thoroughly all throughout. In effect, "Sudden death" provides an insightful look at how specific medical procedures that are otherwise ineffective, like the CPR, often result to reinforcement of people's beliefs in its capacity to save lives and most importantly, the growing fear of death in contemporary society.

Works Cited

Timmermans, S. (1999). Sudden death and the myth of CPR. Temple University….....

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