Liverpool Care Pathway - The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year?

Some seasonal Life Café for seasoned campaigners and some thoughts on unseasonal sentiments.



What a wonderful idea: that life-saving should form part of the normal, everyday school curricula; that it should be as natural as... breathing.

MPs finally debated Teresa Pearce MP’s Bill to introduce first aid in all schools. 

Two years ago, Bolton West MP, Julie Hilling, campaigned for this and started a petition which amassed 100,000 signatures.

See -

Liverpool Care Pathway - A Life Café Poser

On Friday 20^th November, the Emergency First Aid Education Bill didn’t even make it through its second reading.

“Currently only 24 per cent of schools teach first aid and almost 60 per cent of children have had no first aid training at all. Without first aid education, more young people are going to leave school in England without the skills and confidence to act if they witness someone suffering a medical emergency.”

There are band wagons aplenty and band wagons galore to sign folk up to end their lives in a nice tidy fashion but the enthusiasm is lacking to preserve life.

The DoH is avidly promoting death and dying...

The Dying Matters coalition, funded by the Department of Health and led by the NCPC, has been promoting this in schools.

“The Dying Matters book, 'Dying to Know', is a great prompt to get the conversation started.”

Dying Matters, together with the National Council for Palliative Care, believes all secondary school pupils in England should be taught about issues relating to death and dying as part of the national curriculum.

We have produced a number of resources to help teachers incorporate death, dying and bereavement into lessons.
- edubuzz.org

The Lakhani Recommendations caution us in the rash use of CPR, of course. We cannot have troops of young life-savers rushing in willy-nilly and non-selectively to save lives.

The Lakhani mantra is so oft reported now.

This is the Express –

DNR notices are used to stop patients suffering needlessly when their lives are only likely to be extended for a short period.

Medical experts say 15 per cent of patients at most are brought back to life, and some suffer permanent brain damage.

And this is The Mail –

Only 10 to 15 per cent of patients are saved following attempted CPR 

Well, there’s a downer for you. Hardly worth the effort of trying.

There is the cost of living and permitting to live to consider. If so few survive who are revived and rushed off to hospital, on the Communitarian NHS balance sheet it would have been best not to have stepped in at all. You don't randomly throw the starfish back into the sea.

See...?

Liverpool Care Pathway - Back To A Way Forward 

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Bee Wee Tool

The frail elderly must be left with their dignity.

There is the issue of accessing and respecting ACDs, also.

Far too weighty matters to be left for amateur life-savers to consider.

Richard Dawkins has recommended on Twitter the killing of unborn Downs Syndrome children on the grounds that it is moral to do so.

Should troops of potential life-savers be let loose to save persons without any ethical consideration of should they proceed?

Is this a jest too far to ingest...?

- The Sun

Mencap says –

People with learning disability are more likely to have a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) slapped in their file for this reason. It is a moral judgement on perceived 'quality of life'.

Jan Tregelles, Mencap's acting chief executive, has said this is: “A scandal of avoidable deaths on the scale of Mid-Staffs.”

That is not merely thought provoking; that is disquieting and concerning.

What a wonderful idea: that life-saving should form part of the normal, everyday school curricula; that it should be as natural as... breathing.

But there are consequences to consider far more pressing.

The NHSLA has been provided with £400m to pay for legal eagles to advise on plausible deniability...

- Mail Online

Further considerations -

Liverpool Care Pathway - Making The MOLST Of Your POLST 

Liverpool Care Pathway - It's Living Matters Awareness Week!