Palliative health care (end of life care) is any type of health care or treatment that focuses on reducing the severity of pain, rather than endeavouring to check, or turn around the advancement of the disease. The aim is to stop and/or relieve the discomfort and to better actual day-to-day life for patients facing up to chronic disease.
Even so, not all end of life care services are identical in the quality they provide, and there has been a lot of accusations (and proven cases) of neglect (and even mistreatment) taking place in care centres that lead to people sustaining extreme discomfort and pain over lengthy periods of time. For instance an accusation is made against Sheffield Teaching Hospitals who are charged with negligence with a particular patient they were caring for, with details of communications with the patient’s daughter and the hospital.
So we cannot take such care for granted - family and friends of an individual going into an institution should be open-eyed and ensure their family member or friend receives professional attention.
Should your family member or friend be getting health care under the NHS, there’s also an NHS complaints procedure you can utilise if you want to voice a complaint.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.