Medical Tattoo's

I have been reading various articles lately about people who are tattooing their medical directives/allergies/alerts to some area of their body. Like "No CPR" on their chest, or the medical alerts on their wrists instead of wearing a bracelet. What is the position of your department on this issue? Would you follow the request of someone who has no CPR/DNR tattooed on their chest? I would be very interested to know your thoughts.

In some ways this is a good idea especially for alerts and allergies, but it would have to be in a consistent place on a person. As for the directives that is a hard one because in order for a directive to be valid it must be signed by the doctor.

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Permalink Reply by Derek R. on April 29, 2012 at 9:13pm

Very well said, John.

And like you pointed out, just because the pt. has some sort of medical awareness symbol on them does not mean that it should be ruled that this is what is wrong. Always fallow protocall when assessing each patient, and look for many clues instead of relying on one.

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Permalink Reply by Patti Walz on April 30, 2012 at 10:02am

I was reading about this in a JEMS magazine first and then it was later brought up again so I thought I would toss it out to you guys and see what your departments stance is.

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Permalink Reply by Patti Walz on April 30, 2012 at 10:30am

Thank you both I appreciate the responses that you have given.

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Permalink Reply by Marty Hrinko on April 30, 2012 at 12:00pm

Obviously the "right" areas for them would be on the wrist,like a bracelet,or somewhere on their chest/neck area like a necklace. I am going to bring this up at are monthly meeting tonight and see if we can set SOP's/SOG's for this situation, and if we can't, maybe see what our Reginal EMS Council can do about it.