Comments on: Palliative care: knowing when not to act

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:55:25 +0000

Amazing how they give up on treatment of the elderly so soon, even where the patient doesn’t want to give up on treatment, isn’t it? Particularly if a particular surgeon has a long waiting list. We all saw how non terminally ill Mrs. Lee (Rusty Lee’s mother) wasn’t. I don’t like the way this pans out at all….but I expect all the doctors who hate time intensive old patients will absolutely love this pathway…why dont they just throw them in a skip at the back of the hospital and have done with it? Instead of pretending they ‘care’?

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:57:53 +0000

“Even some philosophers find it tricky to admit that killing someone is not at all the same thing as refusing to try to prevent their inevitable death”

So what? Some philosophers thought it was OK to kill people to save health service costs….e.g. Karl Binding & Alfred Hoche…

By: L.Robertson

L.Robertson — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:47:17 +0000

I can’t say I want any ‘kind caring doctors or nurses’ around when I die….if they’ve exhausted treatments, then just go away and leave us in privacy please….if there’s nothing more you can do, what is the point? There is a certain amount of ‘observer bias’ in nursing..I think professionals want some form of relationship that simply doesnt exist. If we’re at home, we don’t really want the intrusion or inconvenience. My sister was given morphine and lied to, by being told it was not addictive…what right have these hospice staff got to deliberately lie like that to a patient? It ruined the last 12 months of her life, as she got junkie withdrawal symptoms every time the nurse was late turning up (which was very very often), and we couldnt go on cruise because of problems with taking meds to some countries…she wasn’t in much pain when she was put on it either. All in all, palliative care is overrated…we managed to die before it was invented, and the notion that ‘a nurse can make a difference to a bereaved person’s grief level’ was not accurate in our case…

By: Germaine

Germaine — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:32:23 +0000

Agree with above comment…I’ve found palliative care staff really fake…and that is at two different MacMillan units…

By: JNoughton

JNoughton — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:30:31 +0000

DM is correct, insofar as ‘babies’ being euthenased with it…depends whether you extend the definition of ‘baby’ to anencephalic ‘birth products’ – whatever -

By: Helen

Helen — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:24:33 +0000

I was ‘terminally ill at the age of 6 – I”m so pleased there wasnt a liverpool care pathway around at the time, as I’d probably be dead now (misdiagnosis). And don’t give me the ‘it doesnt hasten death’ routine – we all know what morphine does, and what they do in hospices,etc etc..

For children who are terminally ill however, I would say that I had no concept of death, dying – no fear at all – only the adults were upset, so its a shame the bereavement section of the LCP is so badly written…even down to the colour of the leaflets (blue…such a cold colour)…its so impersonal…yuk, is my response frankly. Sort of ‘automated-nursing’ ….

By: Fiona

Fiona — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:47:48 +0000

I feel it should be up to the patient whether they want to keep going with medical treatment; that’s the problem with the v.8 of this pathway – it was written in 2003, 2 years before the Mental Capacity Act came into force. If a patient wants to keep on giving it a go, I think you should too….there’s a huge difference between the sort of problems patients with terminal cancer have , and those experienced by other types of terminal patients…and the LCP doesnt really give any useful advise on those …there’s a wealth of difference between the types of ‘agitation and distress’ you experience with a painful cancer, and those you experience in the last days of renal problems…yet the drugs the LCP recommends are almost identical. Not everyone wants to be unconcious for days…they want to speak to their families at the end.

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:39:13 +0000

Mind you, the man who wrote the liverpool care pathway is obsessed with pain…odd he knows b.all about anything but morphine, with your umbrella organisation being sponsored by Napp pharmaceuticals…surprised his bereavement leaflets dont feature product placement!

By: GoCareForSomeoneElsePULEEZ

GoCareForSomeoneElsePULEEZ — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:35:59 +0000

Why do doctors and nurses delude themselves that patients want their intrusions at the end of their lives at all? They are just ‘there’ – if you cant DO anything medical to extend lives, why on earth just admit it, instead of ‘caring’ with morphine and midazolam overdoses ? How on earth can the LCP be so idiotic to prescribe morphine (and nothing else..no other drugs recommended at all) for ‘breathlessness’…ever considered opening a window or using a fan? Its a Brompton’s Latte….kick it back into the hospices – we couldnt get rid of the district nurse with our mother…we simply didnt want her there , and neither did our mum…it was like she’d seen ‘Song of Bernadette’ as a kid, and wanted some sort of praise for her ‘caring’…total invasion of our last times together!

By: Hayley Eastwood

Hayley Eastwood — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 22:23:56 +0000

As the mirror article says the LCP does not state with holding food and water it is just allowing patients to die naturally without active intervention such as artifically feeding them. I think medicine has sometimes gone too far as we don’t know wen to stop, death is inevitable and im sure all of us just want a peaceful, pain free death been looked after by kind caring drs and nurses

By: Irene Ogrizek

Irene Ogrizek — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:53:36 +0000

I have written about elder-care in Canadian hospitals and I have a lot of reservations about actually calling it “care.” I feel the same way about the Liverpool Care Pathway. My mother’s story provides a different perspective from the one posited in this article. It is published on my website and the link is:

http://ireneogrizek.ca/2012/12/28/5762-the-right-to-choose-life-or-death/