Ship of Fools: The Maily Telegraph: Stop trying to hurt the dying

Thread: The Maily Telegraph: Stop trying to hurt the dying Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

I've finally had it with the Torygraph. For the last month the complete scumbags have been actively trying to destroy the care provided to terminally ill patients. (The usual suspects like The Daily Heil and even the BBC have joined in, of course).

For the past month the scum have, either through ignorance or malice been actively trying to destroy care given to dying patients. Most recently at o9pm tonight.

And I have one thing to say to the journalists and editors involved. "When you finally come to the end of your miserable lives, may you get the sort of care you are aiming for. May the doctors keep you alive and awake as your body rots around you, never ceasing even as you long for death. Or may you be sat in a bed, left to expire, alone and unmourned, not put on any sort of clinical pathway at all but just left there while the entire medical staff ignores you because you have destroyed their treatment methods. And you BBC idiot, may you be treated the way you advocate - taken to the vet in a cage and put down by lethal injection. After all, you seem to accept and publish uncritcally the idea that it would be better to be treated as a pet at the end of your life."

In fact I don't wish any of those on anyone, however poetic the justice would be. But it's what these half-assed loads their mothers should have swallowed that call themselves journalists are trying to produce. I don't know whether they are too incompetent to do their research before creating a scandal, too lazy, or actively malicious. But the result is the same. An attempt to afflict the afflicted and to destroy medical care for terminally ill patients.

(I got fed up earlier today and this is the angry overflow from my research and blog on the subject)

Posted by Not (# 2166) on :

Thanks Justinian. To be honest, I copped out of posting about this because I'm so weary of it at the moment. Not only is it demoralising for those of us trying to provide good and compassionate end of life care, worse, it's making relatives of those dying anxious and uncertain. And we're having to deal with distressed people whose loved ones died some time ago - peacefully and with no one having concerns at the time - now wondering if we murdered them.

I'm so sick of it.

So thanks for your rant - I didn't have the energy, but good to know someone sees the reality.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

I'm with you, folks.

Fat arse creeps. Not only don't know what they're talking about, they actively DON"T WANT to know what they're talking about.

When my time comes, I wanna go on the Liverpool Care pathway. I wanna have a nurse come check me every 2 hours, so the care staff know if I'm getting worse, staying the same or even (whisper it) recovering. And if I am getting on with dying, I don't want them bothering me by carrying on forcing pills down my throat for my high chloresterol or in-growing toenails. And I really, really don't want to be left in a corner and ignored by staff who don't know how to look after someone who's dying.

Whatever it is, these crap journalists have got to spin it into some sort of scandal. The real tragedy is that an awful lot of people take what they write seriously. And people facing the end of their lives are particularly vulnerable to scare stories.

[Projectile]

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I would also point out that 'not given a leaflet' is not the same as - has not been told about, had the matter discussed with them.

Also, can't find this documented - is not necessarily the same as, this was not done. It should be documented, but you don't then know if the protocol was followed and you have a failure of documentation - or it wasn't followed and the documentation is fine.

Thirdly, you can tell relatives someone is dying multiple times without it sinking in. One reason is that no-one can be absolutely sure, and so they tend to say things like - he has only a 50% chance of surviving more than 12 months or he has a life limiting condition, we cannot say that he is going to die tomorrow - but at some point he will go into crisis and we will not be able to stop it.

(Also, you want to be *very* careful about the torygraph's figures - they got the numbers in this story wrong by half a billion.)

Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :

Whatever and whyever Justinian thinks the result is (his blogpost link comes up as a blank on my browser), I can't see any evidence that either the Torygraph or the Beeb are "trying to destroy care given to dying patients." I mean - how likely is that?

I do know that at the end of my life I don't want my loved ones or myself to be starved or thisted to death, however. I have no idea if that is what the LCP permits or not. But if the Torygraph got this right, it seems to have happened in the cases of Mr Oszek and Mrs Greenwood

quote:
The family of Arthur Oszek, 86, say they did not find out he had been put on the Liverpool Care Pathway last year until he was left begging for a drink, having been taken off his drip.
[...]
Patricia Greenwood, 82, was put on the pathway in August, after being admitted to Blackpool Victoria Hospital with heart problems, and then suffering a fall.

Doctors told her family that they had taken her off feeding tubes because she was not expected to last more than a couple of days.

After her son, Terry, 57, defied the hospital's orders and gave her sips of water through a straw, Mrs Greenwood, a former pub landlady, rallied, and doctors agreed to put her back on a drip.

If true, that is horrible and would justify the article on it own.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Have some information, Chesterbelloc.

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Have some information, Chesterbelloc.

Thanks for the link DT. I found this...

The LCP has continued to be controversial. It has been claimed that elderly patients were admitted to hospital for emergency treatment and put on the LCP without documented proof that the patient wanted it, or could not recover from their health problem; 48 year old Norfolk man Andrew Flanagan was revived by his family and went home for a further five weeks after doctors put him on the LCP.[23] The Royal College of Physicians found that up to half of families were not informed of clinicians’ decision to put a relative on the pathway.[24]

Writing in the Daily Mail, Patrick Pullicino has claimed that doctors' use of the the LCP protocol has turned it into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.[25] In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, six doctors belonging to the Medical Ethics Alliance[24] called on LCP to provide evidence that the pathway is "safe and effective, or even required", arguing that, in the elderly, natural death is more often painless, provision of fluids is the main way of easing thirst, and "no one should be deprived of consciousness except for the gravest reason."

It seems to me that the Mail and Telegraph are guilty of nothing more than reporting the concerns of Doctors, the Royal College of Physicians and other quite reputable medical bodies.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I did think it was a good source int hat it presented both sides of the argument. Though I think the evidence is being spun rather hard.

Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :

quote:
Originally posted by deano:
The LCP has continued to be controversial. It has been claimed that elderly patients were admitted to hospital for emergency treatment and put on the LCP without documented proof that the patient wanted it, or could not recover from their health problem; 48 year old Norfolk man Andrew Flanagan was revived by his family and went home for a further five weeks after doctors put him on the LCP.[23]

Patient the doctors think there's nothing more can be done for recovers anyway. News at 11.

quote:
The Royal College of Physicians found that up to half of families were not informed of clinicians’ decision to put a relative on the pathway.[24]

If that is true (it doesn't match the Royal College of Physicians report I've found - if it is true I'd suggest it was probably taken from an audit of a hospital known to be failing) then it shows precisely one thing. The Liverpool Care Pathway is not being followed because the LCP mandates you always discuss things with the relative or carer.

quote:
It seems to me that the Mail and Telegraph are guilty of nothing more than reporting the concerns of Doctors, the Royal College of Physicians and other quite reputable medical bodies.

The Royal College of Physicians supports the LCP, and the "criticism" the Torygraph found boils down to it not being implemented properly. The Medical Ethics Alliance is so reputable that it doesn't have a Wikipedia page and what it claims to be its journal is, in fact a blog. And Professor Pullicino is one man.

So no, I can't agree with you there.

[ 02. December 2012, 13:07: Message edited by: Justinian ]

Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on :

It is depressing when the Telegraph is following the Mail

It is at the very least irresponsible journalism.

In the meantime; try this...

AFZ

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

Hi Chesterbelloc,
you know me a bit in real life and you know my expertise lies in humanities not science, so let me tell you a story.

I was assigned to work, for once, on a science assignment. At the bottom of the assignment I was given, lay a Daily Telegraph science and medicine article on what you would think was a fairly non-controversial subject ( by which I mean not one of their obvious hot buttons).

My first step was simple, phone Professor X whose work the article was about and ask about the research at the bottom of the article. When I did, I was horrified, Professor X's work had been wholly misrepresented by the Telegraph and then picked up by many other news sources. He was hugely upset and worried about the effect this misrepresentation was having on his vulnerable patients.

I got quite a shock too, as I thought that 'quality papers' didn't do that kind of thing. How my specialist science writer and scientist friends laughed at me! I was already used to looking at alleged 'quality newspaper' articles in my own field and being amazed by how often they got it wrong and how ignorant they were, and even by the things I myself was made to have said when I'd been interviewed - cases where I carefully explained to a journo that X is not the case, only to see myself quoted directly as saying the very opposite.

Yet somehow it had never occurred to me that science and medicine reporting was just as bad. As this was the first of a couple of science/medicine assignments I was given, I set out to educate myself. The result is that I would not readily believe a science or medicine story reported by any British 'quality' newspaper or news website (including I'm sad to say BBC News) without checking it against either the original journal article or an evaluation of the original research written by someone qualified enough to write it up.

Once you start doing the homework and bookmarking sites written by people with the academic background to work directly from the papers, you see a very different picture.

So what's going on?

Three things - (1) newspapers which have economised by getting rid of expert correspondents, so people who haven't a clue are writing the story (2) newspapers and news websites which have economised by staff cuts to the extent that the few journos they have retained don't have the time to do more than regurgitate press releases - they often don't even lift the phone (3) newspapers which put 'getting a story' above accuracy and which bend and spin the facts to suit the particular bias of their newspaper.

So it's mostly market forces but with a good spoonful of unethical journalism. The problem is that we're naturally inclined not to doubt a story which chimes with our own bias and beliefs but to find reasons why it must be true. This makes the low quality of our science journalism and the tendency of our papers to have political biases and to twist stories to play to them particularly insidious.

One of the better sites to check (though not the last word) is NHS 'Behind the Headlines' which deals with these sort of reporting problems and which has an article on the Liverpool Care Pathway - here.

But yes, even if it's usually more cock-up than conspiracy, it's worth being incredibly wary of science and medicine reporting not just in The Telegraph but in the other British news sites too. The good thing was that it made me really increase the amount of specialist science writing I consume.

cheers,
L

Posted by Jigsaw (# 11433) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Not:
Thanks Justinian. To be honest, I copped out of posting about this because I'm so weary of it at the moment. Not only is it demoralising for those of us trying to provide good and compassionate end of life care, worse, it's making relatives of those dying anxious and uncertain. And we're having to deal with distressed people whose loved ones died some time ago - peacefully and with no one having concerns at the time - now wondering if we murdered them.

I'm so sick of it.

So thanks for your rant - I didn't have the energy, but good to know someone sees the reality.

Recently retired palliative care nurse here, echoing this, but now with a revitalised energy, thanks to Not. I have been appalled at the front page headlines in the Daily Mail, the second one two weeks ago implying that hospitals are being paid to put people on the LCP, and the latest one last Thursday implying that babies and children are being killed by being put on the LCP.
The LCP does NOT starve people to a horrible death. It does NOT leave people with dry mouths so that their tongue sticks to the roof of their mouths. It should NOT leave relatives uninformed about what is happening to their nearest and dearest.

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

I helped implement the latest edition of the LCP in the hospital where I work, and I concur with a lot of what's been said here. The LCP is absolutely not about hastening patients' death, and as for causing suffering in the last hours and days of life - that's exactly what it's designed to stop!

What do these morons in the Press want? A return to the days when doctors looked on death as a failure, shoved patients into side-wards, and withdrew from caring for them? Or a continuation of "heroic" treatment (never was a word so ineptly applied!) that subjected dying patients to invasive and often painful medical interventions right up to the moment they drew their last breath? I've seen those things, in the days before the LCP (and when I was nowhere near as confident about challenging them as I would be today).

If there are places where the LCP is being misapplied, for instance by ineffective prior communication with a patient's carers, then it needs to be tightened, not bloody thrown out. Idiots.

Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :

When I read the Telegraph link in the OP it seemed to be simply a report that people were being put on the Liverpool Care Path without their consent, and the reaction of the Health Secretary.

I may have missed something, but I didn't get the impression that the paper was condoning it.

Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :

Louise, thank you for your post and I'm sorry for taking so long to acknowledge it. FWIW, I utterly jive with your press-sceptical attitude. I know how a certain paper always puts the worst possible spin on my own employing org, for example. The reporting on Catholic issues is also - well, let's just say disappointing.

In fact, I wasn't trying to defend the T'graph (or the Beeb's) stories linked to here. Certainly not on their/its reporting on the LCP - about which I know shamefully little. But I do know - from rather unpleasant personal experience (based, I admit, on an unproven hunch) - that starving and thisrting patients to death is not as rare as it should be. Quite independently of that, I personally think that no-one should be starved or thirsted to death. And that was what I responded to in my post - the reports of just that happening.

I did not claim to know that this is or was authorised by the LCP or that it even happened as reported by the T'graph. I just wanted to say that - if true - these reports disturbed me very much, and that even if it got all the LCP stuff wrong, it was worth reporting on that alone.

I still think that a deliberate attempt to deprive people of adequate deathbed care is highly unlikely to have been the aim of those articles. A casual disregard, based on the need to get a good story though? Maybe I'd be more likely to be persuaded of that.

Anyway, thanks again.

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