UK: TRULY TERRIBLE STORY
Victim
of atomised medical care?
Perhaps because the
Olympics have driven almost everything from the British media, perhaps
because an inquest has still not concluded, what looks to be a truly
terrible story has been reported in just two newspapers, the Daily
Mail and the Independent. This is from Liz Hull's account
in the Mail –
The
parents of a 12-year-old NHS patient claim she was left for so long
by staff that rigor mortis had set in by the time anyone realised she
was dead...
Emma
Stones, who had cerebral palsy and a mental age of five, was admitted
to hospital with flu-like symptoms last year...
But
staff failed to diagnose a bacterial infection because they were too
busy to carry out basic blood tests and neglected to check on her
properly, an inquest has been told.
Her
parents, Mike Stones and Tracy Futcher, claim Emma was left alone in
a room at Tameside General Hospital, in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater
Manchester, for hours without proper care and died overnight after
developing blood poisoning without anyone realising.
Her
father said that when they arrived at the hospital at 8.30am the next
morning after being called there by staff, a doctor said: ‘Emma’s
heart has just stopped, she has just died.’ But Mr Stones, 59, who
was Emma’s full-time carer, said yesterday that by then she was
already ‘stiff as a board... They took a chance with my daughter
and left her. They haven’t a clue when she died. I went to kiss her
on the forehead and she was ice cold, as though she’d come out of
a fridge...
'I
felt her limbs and she was as stiff as a board and they tried to
insult my intelligence by saying she had just died'.
Evidence
given to the hospital’s internal inquiry by the nurse who found
Emma’s body suggested that rigor mortis had already set in.
The
Coroner will deliver his verdict today.
A
general point
I
know nothing of the facts of this particular case. I am enthusiastic
for the principles that underlie our National Health Service, and
appreciative of the sums that have been spent on my own medical
treatments over the years, and I respect the individual skills that I
have been directed to me .
But
I do know that people can die as a result of neglect and unfocussed
medical care under the NHS and, as I drift into old age,
increasingly see the extra-ordinarily problem-centred nature of care
and treatment provided, rather than patient-centred care, a triumph
of management over humanity. I know that the situation is not
uniform and that most individual health workers whom I have met do
'care'. I appreciate what medical, nursing and technical staff mean
when they have have this gently pointed out to them from the
patient's point of view, and answer 'It's the system'.
Sure,
the service can be extraordinarily transparent now, and staff will
immediately answer questions asked them, openly and honestly. One
has of course to know what should need asking and often the
responses bear the whiff of 'guidelines', and questioning beyond
these is not always as welcome. I appreciate the revolution in
information-management (not just in the NHS) from the days of
frightening secrecy to patients' 'being their own case-managers'. I
also recognise that there are subjective factors here that need be
more explicitly confronted, like the mental competence to undertake
this role, not least when one is sick and stressed, and confused by
the whole unfamiliar situation...
I
conclude that the service is being let down that by a systemic
problem stemming from a particular model of what constitutes health,
sickness and treatment, and I try to resist concerns for my own
future – for our universalised health care means that it can happen
to anyone. The implicit model appears to be that man is the sum of
his parts. There is no need even to consider some metaphysical
element, such a simple, additive, non-systemic way of thinking is
enough on its own to point the way to reductionist thinking, and to
reductionist treatment and its organisation. In acute situations,
atomised care can kill. In chronic ones, as can happen with lifelong
disability – it may mean an unsatisfactory jumble of unrelated
interventions, bitterly defended if questioned.
That
Emma's lonely death, and her parents' experience of this, might have
been made less dignified and even more distressing by such a factor
following a life with cerebral palsy, I find particularly
poignant.
Reference
Hull.
L (2012) Parents' horror after daughter, 12, lay dead in NHS hospital
for so long that rigor mortis had set in, Daily
Mail,
5
August
Labels: Cerebral palsies, Philosophy
2 Comments:
That such could happen in a "developed" country like U.K, I shudder to think what could happen in a country like mine where her leaders have made sure that it remains a "developing" one! I can imagine the child struggling to call for attention and the monster CP not letting her. Really a pity.
Never mind the economics, you are right, it is a terrible human situation.
I do know what country you think of and it would be wrong for me to guess, but I sometime think my own is is a state of decline in certain respects, not least in that institutions that might possible try to be human, and could if left to themselves could be succeeding as a matter of course, are now being 'managed' in such away that it is very hard for them to do so.
It i not just old people and children who may resonable fear for their very lives if they are admitted to hospital in the UK, or to other kinds of 'caring' institution too.
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