Don’t you dare preach to me about a situation you know nothing about. I am ending this conversation now.
Thank you Stella.
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well people need to be careful what they write as that is not what is written.
Harry, On a forum, sometimes people need to be able to read between the lines and have some understanding of emotions… 'nuff said. 
does not change the words.
here we are a post about a doctor who gave “extra meds” to patients outcry that she put possibly over 600 people into an earlier grave. Maybe she was just giving that little extra to “help them on their way” out of the goodness of her heart.
strikes me as rather hypocritical, great if its what we wanted or what the person wanted, does not change this Doctor broke the law and should be punished same as anyone else who bends the rules to help people on their way. One day euthanasia will come about but until then its against the law and how many other people with this district nurse give a little extra help along the way to…
Harry…Have you read the Report which has just been made public… ??
she essentially murder all these people and any person medical or not that does such a think should be arrested and charged with murder. Premeditated at that
Sorry may be a bit raw for me. Just having lost my own dad who had rapidly progressive aggressive cancer, the last week of his life screaming in agony as the medication was not lasting begging people to help him die and all we could do was keep him as comfortable as possible.
The nurses giving him everything they legally could to help him be comfortable but nothing given to speed up the process. They did stop treating everything though as per his request and stopped all anti bio tics. He was my rock, he got me through so much more than my asshat of a biological father. He was everything to me. Watching him pass like that was probably the most painful experience ive ever faced.
As i said, no 2 situations are alike but the similarities are the same for all of us. I thank the nurses for doing nothing more than making him comfortable even though he begged everyone to help him die with dignity and at the pace fate decided on.
From my limited reading the of background to this, it seems that the (at the time) newly introduced Liverpool End-of-Life-Care Pathway was being trialled. This was an initiative developed by palliative care teams, notably in Liverpool, to give some professional consistency to the practices involved in care of the dying, which was hitherto neither research-based nor productive of the best and most humane outcomes. Terminally-ill patients were screened-off or side-warded, and treatment and care was ad hoc, and had low priority in a busy acute environment.
The EoLCP was patchily rolled out, and not adequately monitored. The doctor at Gosport seems to have been an enthusiastic ‘early adopter’ whose enthusiasm outstripped her moral and clinical capabilities, and who"went rogue". Her colleagues were possibly aware that she was compulsively putting patients on the “Pathway”, but I can imagine that it might have been a very hard nettle to grasp, with no-one willing to challenge her judgement. After all, they were ‘her patients’ and care of the dying is a sensitive issue.
I’ve read that nurses did have, and did voice, grave concerns about her approach, but were not listened to. This is very much the case in medicine or nursing. People close ranks. The responsible professional bodies put the reputation of the profession ahead of every other consideration, and are quick to stifle whistle-blowers, and shift blame on to them. It was happened to me throughout my career.
This is just an opinion of mine based on a life-time of experience of care of the dying in many settings, not all of it as bad as is being alleged at Gosport, but in very few parts of the system as good as it should or might be.
But this can of worms is a big-time scandal waiting to unfold, and - as usual - the nuances and complexities will be drowned in a torrent of blame and scapegoating. Nothing new there, then.
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I had a GP, who was also a good friend, in the 70s, when euthanasia was a debate in the UK.
Him and I were away sailing, and I asked Him, "what do you think about this xxxx, he smiled, and said, “Bill I’ve been doing it for a long time”.
When Dad died, His Doctor did the same, by ‘denying’ Dad, (at my request), treatment, which would have prolonged his ‘’‘life’’’, on a machine, but not, ‘A Life’.
I wish I had had the opportunity to thank the Doctor.
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the same for my dad, at his own request. No treatment that would prolong life. That is all that should ever be offered legally in the UK. One day euthanasia may become legal in the UK and at that point a new can of worms will be opened but as it stands right now, deliberately (knowing) to aiding a person to die faster is a crime.
When I was a student nurse in the early '80’s it was a given that if a terminally ill patient in his/ her last days was in extreme pain then the morphine would be given in quantities that could perhaps hasten the patient’s demise. We knew this happened and it was seen as caring and considerate.
I hope I never go through the pain that I’ve watched others endure. Unfortunately medical professionals are not allowed to use there own clinical judgement so much because of the bad apples like Shipman.
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Nowadays people needing pain-relief are able to control the amount of morphine or other opiate they receive via a patient-activated syringe-driver. The era when clinicians decided how much drug was needed, or when it should be administered, is mercifully a thing of the past in palliative and end-of-life care.
Opiates do depress respiration and the cough reflex, so people getting therapeutic doses are to some extent vulnerable to chest infections, like bronchopneumonia, once referred to as “the old man’s friend”, as it ushered him painlessly and undramatically into the hereafter. I expect you are familiar with this, Theresa. It’s always good to get informed opinion from nurses on these matters.
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There is a world of difference, though, between this and giving patients who are not in pain enough opiate to help them into the netherworld.
Remember the 456 patients are the ones who are deemed to have had no need for strong pain relief.
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they tend to now go for medication that essentially puts a person into a pain free sleep where they do not know what is going on around them but they are paid free.
whie this is true they also will not give too much of it. it is prescribed and monitored quite closely.
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/NG31/documents/care-of-the-dying-adult-draft-guideline-nice2
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/NG31/documents/care-of-the-dying-adult-full-guideline2
plus 200 with records missing and that is just the ones they think they know about.
Here rests the dilemma. To aid anyone in anyway to speed up their end is illegal. Be that 1 patient of 6 or 700 hundred.
That’s the issue,these patients had no need of such strong pain relief . I have been in the same situation as Theresa giving a patient a legally prescribed,properly recorded dose of medication knowing that it would probably be too much for their body to cope with ,and equally knowing this was the right thing to do. We recently lost a colleague at 45 to breast cancer,she died in a lot of pain ,in a hospice ,that should not be happening in 2018
It may well be that we are looking at manslaughter as a minimum in Gosport I can’t really understand the use of opiates in these cases rather than a sedative type medication (which I still wouldn’t agree with) The Liverpool pathway was very good when used properly, unfortunately it was rarely used properly.
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Agree, unfortunately the spectre of Shipman and the overuse of the LCP has made people a bit frightened of prescribing adequate doses of opioids.
Also, sometimes people’s pain doesn’t want to play ball.
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now my dad passed and was quite well managed with pain relief but it still hurt like hell. it lasted for a period but its hard to get on top of pin like that. I cannot fault the hospice they were amazing.
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