DNR is a work of fiction based on facts encompassing conditions in large city hospitals as they existed in the 1970s and '80s. During that period patients who appeared brain-dead without any signs of recovery were left on mechanical ventilators and feeding tubes. They were treated to sustain life but at times lacked the dignity due to them as human beings.
A great conflict developed regarding the issue of not resuscitating these patients should they stop breathing independently or become pulseless. DNR attempts to describe one such case. As John West's life story unfolds, it traverses the multiple challenges, complexities, and ethical issues that occur too frequently in hospital settings as he is caught up in a moral, ethical, and political conundrum.