Liverpool Care Pathway - They Stood By And They Did Nothing…

MailOnline reports -

As the pensioner's life drained away they did not even start chest compressions or summon the hospital's resuscitation team, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard 

They stood by and they did nothing…

This is from the Healthcare Commission report -

They stood by and they did nothing…

The request for a doctor was via a telephone call to Thamesdoc!

An hour later, and Thamesdoc had not responded to the call.

This is from one of the numerous correspondence letters to the Healthcare Commission - 

The nursing sister spoke to me in her office on the day of my mother’s admission. She asked me, if anything should happen – not that it would! – do I want them to have my mother moved to ESH. I thought nothing more of that. Yes, of course I do! That went without saying. In the context of what we now know, that all makes sense. 

They permitted my mother to present cyanosed on the Saturday and did nothing. I received a call early on Sunday morning to say she was suffering from heart failure and that they were getting the doctor. Still unaware of the reality of the situation, we thought they were actually getting the doctor at the hospital. No, they were calling Thamesdoc! An hour later, another call revealed that Thamesdoc were unavailable and so they had called an ambulance! Excuse me? 

To recapitulate: We were not aware, had not been informed, that this was a nurse-led hospital and that there was no medical doctor on site at the weekend. My mother had presented cyanose, been left to deteriorate to a catastrophic life-threatening condition, - and they called Thamesdoc. My mother perished halfway between Caterham Dene and ESH, paramedics ramming tubes down her throat in frantic, vain attempts to revive her. This was reported to me in A & E in explanation of the very apparent bruising. 

It is a duty incumbent upon every medical person to protect life and to do no harm. And yet, it is now plain that there is a policy set in place at Caterham Dene to make no great effort to intervene to preserve life, to ‘let them go’ and even ‘help them on their way.’ That is why there was no effort at all by nursing staff, as is now admitted, to monitor my mother’s status. This was not as a result of a failure in the nursing procedure, however. They were following policy in not doing so, to permit nature to take its course and even lend it assistance! 

Letters sent to the District Nurses Office to determine what had transpired were actually returned ‘refused’ by Royal Mail and the person to whom we had written and who had offered help transferred, or was transferred, elsewhere. 

As is borne out by testimony of the correspondence documents, my mother was subjected to actual harm both by action and by inaction at crucial points in her treatment, or rather mistreatment. By negligence, incompetence, malpractice or by design, this did cause her to suffer and to perish at their hands. 

And that policy set in place is the Liverpool Care Pathway.