Moving right along: no death panels here, just a death pathway
The Times Online reports the case of Hazel Fenton, a near-casualty of the British health care system:
AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.
Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.
Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.
This is no surprise. A little over a month ago I noted that a number of British doctors had raised the alarm that this sort of thing was happening. Dr. Hargreaves, a palliative care specialist, stated that:
…some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.
He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in”¦
He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.
Hazel Fenton’s alert and persistent daughter managed to get her taken off the pathway, but the daughter apparently had to fight the hospital for weeks before they would give her mother artificial feeding and a chance to live.
That is a good and faithful daughter.
Anybody without such a faithful child to fight for them is in a lot of trouble.
I think in a way this is worse than a “Death Panel”. It’s widespread chronic killing, made as stealthy and non-responsible as possible.
A rose by any other name… 😡
Ball says her mother was feeling better and chatting to her family, but it took another four days to persuade doctors to give her artificial feeding.
Well, that story seems a little suspect to me.
I started searching google to find any past evidence doctors are refusing FAMILY members (UK or anywhere) requests to insert a feeding tube, and other than where family members are disagreeing about care (Terri Schiavo), it turned up nothing — at least where family members are involved.
But in case you’re worried about the death panel choosing you when you’re an old maid in 5 years, here’s a sixty second video of a wife putting feeding tube in her husband’s nose. You should be able to do yourself.
Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOLBKcKK7NI
(oh, I probably missed something, but post a link as I don’t take anyone’s word here)
Logern, go look up what “old maid” means. In your eagerness to be mean, you look very silly.
Thank you, Dr. Hargreaves, for remembering your Hippocratic Oath. May others who share your concerns find their voices as well. And to Mrs. Fenton’s daughter, for not giving up and not giving in to the bureaucrats.
Logern, yeah, nothin’ to it. And when you’ve succesfully threaded the NG tube into your lungs, start filling it with fluid. See how long you last.
Of course, if you are 80 years old and debilitated, placing the tube will be even easier.
Since it won’t have “DEATH PANEL” on the letterhead, there are no such things as “DEATH PANELS”.
Regarding health care in general, I tend to revert to what a certain wise old head once observed:
“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”
In this case, when government is in charge of providing you with health care, that same government now has the ability to withhold health care – for a variety of rationalized reasons.
Ya know, I actually feel better after imagining Logern shoving a tube up their own nose….really, there’s nothing to it- right?
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It’s not very much of a leap from the “right to die” to the “duty to die.”
Larry Grossman, a former Minister of Health in Ontario, a province in Canada once said on TV that people use most of their OHIP (Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan) dollars in the last six months of their lives.
Inotherwords, we have a government subsidized health plan and no one is neglecting old people.
One of my own family members was rushed him into a major operation (3 yrs ago) when it was discovered that he had a large abdominal aneurysm.
He was already over 80.
Lordy, Mizz w. she’s almost 40 now.
We’re all in a willing mind
If the men would be so kind
As to wed the lame and blind,
poor old maid
My guess is the pathway is showing the next “logical” step in medical (modern ethical) care. That of ridding the field of any too weak, old, or difficult to treat people. They are merely being emboldened by the US’s seeming embrace of such. Our leaders sure want it. The sad thing is, if they would make if fiscally sound, people would be going for this full out. Thankfully, they haven’t. We still might join the worlds march to health genocide, in spite of the money issues.
If this things gets passed, make sure you don’t need to use it. You will pay for it either way, but just because you pay for cyanide pills through your taxes or “fees” doesn’t mean you necessarily want to take it. Oh, and the plan will see a lot of doctors quitting. Which is part of the plan. It is much more difficult for even interested doctors to tend an overwhelming number of patients. So it goes. No part of this plan is unforeseen, really.
You forget, the English wash their dirty linen in public. It went wrong, we discuss and argue and are outraged. Changes get made – they’re often too restrictive at first, but then get adjusted again. Care pathways for the dying are a good thing and help ensure a dignified and painfree end – the sort I want when my day comes. I’ve worked with them and the alternatives (which are often not so gentle nor nearly so organised). A mistake was made and everyone is now involved sorting it out. This time it was a relative, often it’s a professional … Is your current system so different? So humane? So bloody static no apparent advance ever needs to be re-examined? I am really bored by Americans parading the NHS as the bogey man alternative in order to turn away their eyes from the inequalities of their own system, now under review. Believe me, we have a long track record of beating ourselves arround the head, but get pissed off when people join the party merely to serve their own agendas.
You forget, the English wash their dirty linen in public.
They’ve repealed the Official Secrets Act and passed a Freedom of Information Act? Great news.
Hazel Fenton’s alert and persistent daughter managed to get her taken off the pathway, but the daughter apparently had to fight the hospital for weeks before they would give her mother artificial feeding and a chance to live.
The hospital was hoping that she would self-terminate in those weeks. Which is what usually does happen, but not in this case.
Poor Terri Schiavo didn’t last much longer than a few days, afte rall.
Occam’s Beard,
As far as I’m aware no aspect of the NHS has ever been subject to the Official Secrets’ Act (though laws pertaining to patient confidentiality impact on public disclosure/discussion etc). Regarding ‘Freedom of Information’ (and I have big issues with limitations on its scope here, for example – the BBC’s Balen Report), experience generally suggests that leaking forbidden material to the press gathers an together wider and more interested audience without all that tedious trawling through files, assessing the provenance and accuracy of material. A rent-a-mob. That’s why I tend to digest my news by blogs – even if they can sometimes be really (and deliberately stupid) too.