Care Home Residents and blanket DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) Order During the Pandemic.

 I've blogged before about my wife's experiences in care homes during the pandemic. 

She noticed that DNRs were being written for residents of the various care homes she was managing at the time.

Over a year ago, this report in Learning Disability Today went some way to highlight the issue, but it doesn't delve deep enough. 

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that DNRs were being issued by GPs without the permission or giving notice to care providers or family members of residents. An illegal practice under article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

Let's be clear, during the pandemic it was a pretty dodgy time to get ill and be referred to hospital. The first thing that ambulance crews asked before scooping the patient up was "do they have a purple form" (DNR). 

That then set in motion the limitations of the medical response by the NHS. If you weren't lucky, the presence of the DNR allowed ambulance crews to refuse to take residents to hospital. Instead leaving them in the residence to effectively die, no matter how bad they got. 

If the resident was "lucky", then they would be admitted to hospital, but the presence of the DNR affected the level of care provided. Anecdotal evidence suggests that LD and elderly care home residents were only given minimal care while in hospital. 

Of course there's a chance that the resident survived despite the best efforts of the NHS to deny them care. 

In that case, you'd think that any hospital patient would get a Covid test before being released back to the care of the care home? Nope. The attitude of the NHS at the time appeared to be that they didn't care what happened after the resident had been released from Hospital. "Not their problem" I guess.

So residents, still infectious with Covid were released back to the care of the homes they came from. 

The savvy homes put in place infection control and isolation measures for any and all residents returning back from hospital, whether they presented with Covid or not. Those that weren't so savvy paid the price and had to deal with outbreaks in the home that could have been avoided had the proper measures been put in place.

After seeing the debacle unfolding in New York (thanks to brave YouTubers and Alt Media) and other houses  around the country decimated by Covid brought in from Hospitals, I'd discussed this at the beginning of the pandemic with the wife and I'd said the prudent thing to do would be to set up isolation measures for anyone leaving the protection of the home's "bubble".

Staff were LF tested on a daily basis and PCR tested weekly.

That was about as biologically secure as you could make a care home. 

But I digress. 

We were appalled at the real risks that a care home resident falling into the clutches of the NHS was exposed to. Certainly what residents experienced in some if not most hospitals was a grossly poor level of care. Certainly from the management side of the NHS.

Someone within the NHS must have instigated the signing of DNRs by GPs. It can't have been a local thing, because the evidence (again anecdotal) suggests that this was a nationwide phenomenon.

Here more recently in the Telegraph, it's reported more DNR notices were given to care home residents, but there's no appreciation this was done without consultation with care providers or patient's families. 

The last paragraph in this section should be a scandal:

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“However, what is clear from our results is that for a significant proportion of clinicians, resource limitation continued to factor into clinical decision making even when pressures on NHS resources had returned to near-normal levels.”

The Telegraph previously reported that children with learning disabilities were offered “do not resuscitate” orders during the pandemic, amid concerns about the pressure on the NHS.

Investigations by this newspaper also uncovered reports of adult patients with mental illness and learning disabilities who were given DNACPRs at this time.

A survey by the Care Quality Commission, published in March 2021, found more than 500 care home residents were made subject to DNR orders without their consent.

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That last paragraph, although a scandal in itself, doesn't tell the whole story. Elderly residents of care homes were regularly denied proper levels of care. People's Parents and Grandparents were shuffled off to side wards and denied basic care to die.

THAT is your NHS. That's what the nation clapped for. Feel good about that now?

It's a fucking disgrace and heads should roll. A full, independent investigation should be launched into how the most basic of care was deliberately denied certain patients. This was no accident, no result of negligence. This was a deliberate action by the NHS.

Someone told those GPS to write those DNRs. They didn't do it off their own bat.

Hospital staff accepted the discrimination of care home residents and didn't red flag what was going on.

This has got to be investigated, the people responsible removed from the NHS and it should not happen again.

Finally, the question that has not been addressed is:

Are those DNR notices still in place now? Are care home residents still at significant risk of reduced care levels when admitted to hospital?

UPDATE:

It very much appears as if the DNR orders are still in place. The wife has only recently heard of a resident that went into hospital and instead of receiving a pre-pandemic standard of care, they were actually put on the Liverpool pathway. 

Anyone in care knows and probably despises the Liverpool pathway, especially if they actually do care about their charges. 

The Liverpool pathway is a set of protocols for palliative or end of life care. It effectively withdraws nutrition and care in a way that speeds up the dying process. 

Except the Liverpool Pathway is being instigated on people that have a fair chance of recovery, if only they were actually given a decent standard of care. It's effectively euthanasia by the back door. It's effectively saying that there's a portion of the population that don't deserve care. 

We're back to the 70's and 80's when it comes to care for the elderly and disabled. Before disability rights supposedly protected people from inhuman and discriminatory treatment. 

This is an NHS that is now prepared to refuse care to a proportion of the population. 

It's a scandal that is not being reported. How many people have to die needlessly before the media will pick up on it? 

Or are certain thing taboo now with the media? Just like the extent of Muslim grooming gangs, are they going to stay quiet on on the mistreatment and discrimination of the elderly and disabled?