[Magdalen] RIP Sir Terry Pratchett

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

​I wonder if anyone would refer to the palliative care team?

I recall listening to a lecture by Kuebler-Ross. She was instructing some
nursing students, and they got the idea of looking at cases of terminal
patients.  Everywhere they inquired, however, the answer was the same: "No
one is dying on this ward." This despite the fact that at that facility,
there were a significant number of deaths on a daily basis.  This sparked
the idea of looking into death and dying. In the few cases I have been
familiar with, hospice services were called for when the patient was within
a day or two of death, and it was utterly pointless. Things are better in
that regard, I'm sure.  But I'm also sure that some induhviduals will
simply refuse to admit the patient might be terminal until they cannot find
a pulse.  I guess it's a natural defense mechanism, but still ...

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 12:38 PM, <sally.davies at gmail.com> wrote:

> ​...
>

​
> The best practice is to have a Palliative Care team in every hospital,
> working alongside the regular doctors and effecting a seamless transition
> that involves patient and/or family, nursing staff and medical staff all
> working together to obtain the best possible outcome. Most hospitals can do
> it - no extra staff need be employed, you just have to identify the people
> who really care about this and equip them to play that role. But our
> medical culture i.e. "my patient, my responsibility", does not favour a
> team approach even when lip service is paid to that. This is in the Private
> sector; the State sector here is mostly too overwhelmed, so we have the
> opposite problem, needless loss of patients who could be saved with the
> correct interventions.