Liverpool Care Pathway - The Mob Are Sending In The Cleaners

They will tidy up the LCP mess, or try to do so, but will they make it all SPICT and span...?




Readers of these pages will know all about SPICT -

• The Supportive and Palliative Care Indicator Tool (SPICT^TM) Used in collaboration with NHS Scotland and with kind permission by Dr Kirsty Boyd and Prof Scott Murray. This tool is also used by Coordinate my Care in London.

The BMJ  have now published online an evaluation of the SPICT.

Objective  To refine and evaluate a practical, clinical tool to help multidisciplinary teams in the UK and internationally, to identify patients at risk of deteriorating and dying in all care settings.

The evaluation is made by its authors. The tool is already in use.

Following the review of how the LCP was used in practice and the awaited prosecutions of those who failed in their duty to ensure patient safety and proper training in its use, everyone - it seems - has been rushing around to put their name to the SPICT that will replace it.

No, not individualised care, Mr. Lamb.

Meanwhile, the stories continue to come out.

This is Hendon & Finchley Times –

Mrs Hemington, 93, was admitted to the hospital last August, and during her stay she fell over three times and was found lying naked on a number of occasions before she died on October 1.

Her son, Larry Hemington, was left with many unanswered questions and after speaking to the ombudsman, he received a letter from the hospital trust admitting they had made failures.

But after Mr Hemington called a meeting with his mother’s doctors last week, he was dismayed to learn she had been put on the pathway without her family being consulted.

He said: “She was so excited about being discharged, but then just a day later a doctor told me she had days to live. It made no sense.

"My mother had incredible hope. I believe where there is breath, there is hope and if they hadn’t put her on this pathway she would still be alive today.

“I am angry and beyond furious. My mother was so full of life and I feel she has been failed by the hospital.

“My mother has brought us up to be the kind of people to always believe, which is why this care plan is such a slap in the face. It’s not something we would have agreed to at all.”

These are the arrogant, to whom all knowledge and prognostication is as certain to them as that the day will dawn tomorrow...

Those whose arrogance is served by the tools of the arrogant - the GSF and the SPICT - such that all knowledge and prognostication is as certain to them as that the day will dawn tomorrow...

No hope is futile; all is not within our grasp or understanding so to see.

Even when there is no hope, there is always hope.

"Modo liceat vivere, est spes." - Terence (190 - 159 BC)

     ...While there's life, there's hope.

Living matters. Living always matters because life is precious. To deal with each day as it comes is not to shrink fearfully from death and refuse to contemplate it. It is not to deny that death will one day come a-calling. It is to say: "Not today."