Post by Carl LaFong on Apr 6, 2024 11:55:37 GMT
Were elderly Scots Covid patients left to die against their wishes?
New scandal warning as police probe misuse of Do Not Resuscitate forms
Little about the 4.11am phone call from the care home seemed to add up. Gillian Grant was told her grandmother had deteriorated in the last few hours but that no ambulance had been called.
When she asked staff to do so, she was told: ‘I think it is beyond that stage.’
Assurances had been given days earlier that help ‘absolutely’ would be summoned if her condition worsened.
Ms Grant rushed to the care home, arriving just 19 minutes later yet, apparently, still too late. Staff greeted her with the news her grandmother had died ten minutes before. She asked to see her and, after being given PPE, was led through to her room.
‘Her mouth and her eyes were wide open,’ she recalled. ‘I tried to shut her mouth but it was too hard and I think rigor mortis had set in. She was stone cold and, in my opinion, she had been dead a lot longer than 20 minutes.’
It occurred to her the 91-year-old had succumbed to coronavirus in the Dunbartonshire care home some time before that phone call was placed.
But a young female member of staff assured her she had sat with the pensioner all night. Which made Ms Grant wonder: ‘If you have been sitting with my grandmother all night, why was I just called 20 minutes ago?’
Of the three members of staff on duty that night, one was a man in a dirty white T-shirt and jogging bottoms. He wore no PPE. Ms Grant was horrified.
Hours later she called the Care Inspectorate about what she had seen at Mavisbank care home in Bishopbriggs. She said: ‘I immediately panicked about the whole situation because I thought everybody is going to die here.’
But there was a still more shocking sight to come. It was a piece of paper known as a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) form for her grandmother – and Ms Grant’s name was on it as the next of kin authorising it.
Not only did she never authorise such a thing, but she had made it plain she had no intention of doing so. And yet, as a family member with power of attorney for her grandmother’s affairs, here was her name on a document which effectively denied a beloved relative potentially lifesaving treatment.
Ms Grant has related the tale of her grandmother’s final weeks to the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry which names the use of DNRs as one of its primary areas of investigation.
What the inquiry should find is the administration of this end-of-life procedure remained unaltered by the pandemic. The Scottish Government has, after all, repeatedly insisted there was no change to advice issued to clinicians about the use of DNRs – or DNACPRs (Do Not Attempt Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation) as they are also known.
But the evidence has deviated so far from this guidance that the prospect of criminal proceedings has now been raised. If a DNR form was forged, lawyer Aamer Anwar told the Mail, he would expect nothing less.
Was the DNR relating to Ms Grant’s grandmother then a one-off? Or was the manner of the death of the pensioner – who cannot be named due to reporting restrictions issued by the inquiry – indicative of a pattern?
Days ago, the inquiry heard from Madeana Laing, a manager at Beech Manor Care Home in Blairgowrie, Perthshire. She described a culture in which health professionals urged care homes to update their ‘anticipatory care plans’ for residents. She said she was told: ‘You need to look at who doesn’t have DNRs because they will now need to have one.’
Her response was that this was a discussion for GPs to have with family members – and yet within a couple of days, all the outstanding DNRs were in place. She questioned the extent to which family members were involved in these decisions. The clear impression, she said, was if a resident became ill from Covid – or even an unrelated illness – they would not be going to hospital.
She said: ‘You could clearly see that, if they went to hospital, they had a really good chance of improving, of getting over what was making them unwell in the first place. But it was almost like, you were not playing God, but it was just “no, you can’t go, so you just have to stay”.’
Her understanding, she said, was the DNRs were in place because of difficulties accessing ambulances, paramedics or hospital beds.
In the same day’s evidence, Peter McCormick, managing director of Randolph Hill Nursing Homes, said he believed NHS Scotland had taken a decision – one not discussed in public – that restrictions would be placed on people in care homes receiving hospital treatment.
He said in the case of one nursing home, DNRs were issued on a ‘blanket’ basis – as he understood it, because of the pressures on the NHS.
He said: ‘That couldn’t have been a nuanced discussion. There would have been no discussion involved in that.’
Another witness, Tressa Burke of Glasgow Disability Alliance, told of GP surgeries calling her members out of the blue and urging them to sign DNRs. She said it made them feel they were ‘not worth saving’.
In contrast to the experience in some care homes, others did refer patients with Covid to hospitals.
New scandal warning as police probe misuse of Do Not Resuscitate forms
Little about the 4.11am phone call from the care home seemed to add up. Gillian Grant was told her grandmother had deteriorated in the last few hours but that no ambulance had been called.
When she asked staff to do so, she was told: ‘I think it is beyond that stage.’
Assurances had been given days earlier that help ‘absolutely’ would be summoned if her condition worsened.
Ms Grant rushed to the care home, arriving just 19 minutes later yet, apparently, still too late. Staff greeted her with the news her grandmother had died ten minutes before. She asked to see her and, after being given PPE, was led through to her room.
‘Her mouth and her eyes were wide open,’ she recalled. ‘I tried to shut her mouth but it was too hard and I think rigor mortis had set in. She was stone cold and, in my opinion, she had been dead a lot longer than 20 minutes.’
It occurred to her the 91-year-old had succumbed to coronavirus in the Dunbartonshire care home some time before that phone call was placed.
But a young female member of staff assured her she had sat with the pensioner all night. Which made Ms Grant wonder: ‘If you have been sitting with my grandmother all night, why was I just called 20 minutes ago?’
Of the three members of staff on duty that night, one was a man in a dirty white T-shirt and jogging bottoms. He wore no PPE. Ms Grant was horrified.
Hours later she called the Care Inspectorate about what she had seen at Mavisbank care home in Bishopbriggs. She said: ‘I immediately panicked about the whole situation because I thought everybody is going to die here.’
But there was a still more shocking sight to come. It was a piece of paper known as a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) form for her grandmother – and Ms Grant’s name was on it as the next of kin authorising it.
Not only did she never authorise such a thing, but she had made it plain she had no intention of doing so. And yet, as a family member with power of attorney for her grandmother’s affairs, here was her name on a document which effectively denied a beloved relative potentially lifesaving treatment.
Ms Grant has related the tale of her grandmother’s final weeks to the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry which names the use of DNRs as one of its primary areas of investigation.
What the inquiry should find is the administration of this end-of-life procedure remained unaltered by the pandemic. The Scottish Government has, after all, repeatedly insisted there was no change to advice issued to clinicians about the use of DNRs – or DNACPRs (Do Not Attempt Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation) as they are also known.
But the evidence has deviated so far from this guidance that the prospect of criminal proceedings has now been raised. If a DNR form was forged, lawyer Aamer Anwar told the Mail, he would expect nothing less.
Was the DNR relating to Ms Grant’s grandmother then a one-off? Or was the manner of the death of the pensioner – who cannot be named due to reporting restrictions issued by the inquiry – indicative of a pattern?
Days ago, the inquiry heard from Madeana Laing, a manager at Beech Manor Care Home in Blairgowrie, Perthshire. She described a culture in which health professionals urged care homes to update their ‘anticipatory care plans’ for residents. She said she was told: ‘You need to look at who doesn’t have DNRs because they will now need to have one.’
Her response was that this was a discussion for GPs to have with family members – and yet within a couple of days, all the outstanding DNRs were in place. She questioned the extent to which family members were involved in these decisions. The clear impression, she said, was if a resident became ill from Covid – or even an unrelated illness – they would not be going to hospital.
She said: ‘You could clearly see that, if they went to hospital, they had a really good chance of improving, of getting over what was making them unwell in the first place. But it was almost like, you were not playing God, but it was just “no, you can’t go, so you just have to stay”.’
Her understanding, she said, was the DNRs were in place because of difficulties accessing ambulances, paramedics or hospital beds.
In the same day’s evidence, Peter McCormick, managing director of Randolph Hill Nursing Homes, said he believed NHS Scotland had taken a decision – one not discussed in public – that restrictions would be placed on people in care homes receiving hospital treatment.
He said in the case of one nursing home, DNRs were issued on a ‘blanket’ basis – as he understood it, because of the pressures on the NHS.
He said: ‘That couldn’t have been a nuanced discussion. There would have been no discussion involved in that.’
Another witness, Tressa Burke of Glasgow Disability Alliance, told of GP surgeries calling her members out of the blue and urging them to sign DNRs. She said it made them feel they were ‘not worth saving’.
In contrast to the experience in some care homes, others did refer patients with Covid to hospitals.
