New NHS guidelines on “end of life” care are worse than the Liverpool Care Pathway and could push more patients to an early grave, a leading doctor has warned.
Prof Patrick Pullicino, one of the first medics to raise concerns over the pathway, said the national proposals would encourage hospital staff to guess who was dying, in the absence of any clear evidence, and to take steps which could hasten patients’ death.
….“Diagnosis of who was imminently dying was the core problem of the Liverpool Care Pathway and is no better in the Nice document,” he said. “It includes a cookbook list of features that may suggest someone is dying but is totally inadequate to make a diagnosis and is not evidence-based. So we are back at the LCP in terms of the risk of putting patients who are not dying onto inappropriate and potentially lethal treatment.”
The neurologist said patients should be given “good quality compassionate care” not a set of protocals based on poor evidence.
The pathway was axed following a review led by Baroness Neuberger, which said patients “should be supported with hydration and nutrition unless there is a strong reason not to do so”.The new guidance says dying patients who are able to drink should be given water if they seek it.
But it also says patients should also be told “death is unlikely to be hastened by not having clinically assisted hydration” – such as a drip.
Prof Pullicino said the claim was “completely untrue,” stating that lack of hydration would kill anyone who cannot drink.
He accused Nice of a “disaster of misinformation, distortion and ambiguity” in its advice.
So they’re told to tell us that not having a drip won’t kill us when in fact not having a drip will kill us.
It’s the Wonder of the World, isn’t it?
It’s all very Newspeak, Care Pathway, Nice.
“Diagnosis of who was imminently dying was the core problem of the Liverpool Care Pathway ..”
No. No, it most certainly wasn’t.
“The neurologist said patients should be given “good quality compassionate care” not a set of protocals based on poor evidence.”
Unfortunately, all we have in the NHS is (often foreign) nursing staff drilled to stick rigidly to protocols and check sheets and never to deviate from them.
So it’s never going to work, is it?
Where’s the disclaimer?
Pullicino is a millitant Catholic. He presumably thinks those on the edge of death should be kept this side as long as possible so they can give their souls to Jesus first.
BiG. Pullicino helped expose the scandal after he found a weekend locum had put one of his patients on the LCP. He (Pullicino) stopped that, resumed treatment, and the patient recovered & lived for another 2 years.
Germans might call his actions ‘militant’, but the rest of the world does not.
+1, Doc Bud.
It’s like the academic-speak in another of Tim’s posts today. They are trying deliberately to keep normal people from understanding what they’re doing.
Lest we forget this report, not yet redacted by the Guardian from June last year when the Washington based Commonwealth fund placed the NHS at number 1 in its list of Health Care systems:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/17/nhs-health
Of course this piece is quoted ad nauseam by your Richard Murphys, your Seamus Milnes, your Owen Jones, and so on. For me the classic line is this one:
‘The only serious black mark against the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive’
which is kind of the point of a healthcare system, or based on this, maybe that isn’t the purpose?
Even Roman Catholics can be right sometimes, BiG.
Yes, stopped clocks and so on. You should read some of his bunkum about souls. That people intelligent enough to become professors of medicine can have such an intentional blind spot to the issue of gods and ghosts is just terrifying. That way lies homoeopathy.
Thank God your absolute knowledge of what is real is here to guide us Biggie.
You really deserve the eternity of oblivion atheists are so fond of.
And yet Sarah Palin is a moron to point out the inhumanity of Death Panel(tm), where you are starved and thirst to death.
“That people intelligent enough to become professors of medicine can have such an intentional blind spot to the issue of gods and ghosts is just terrifying.” Golly, you’re easily terrified.