Posted on 02/25/2011 9:03:23 AM PST by marshmallow
Rome, Italy, Feb 24, 2011 / 07:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Stories of elder care nightmares in England and Wales are the result of a new generation of “scared people” that see the elderly, sick and handicapped as “cumbersome” and “useless,” according a Vatican consultant.
British authorities earlier this month reported that there are grave deficiencies in the country’s national health care system.
According to an analysis of death certificates of elder care home residents by the Office of National Statistics, 667 hospital patients died of dehydration between 2005 and 2009 in England and Wales.
The study also reported an increase in negligence-caused deaths due to malnutrition, blood poisoning and infection from bed sores over the past decade in the national health system.
The reports have prompted cries for reform in Britain and even caught the attention of the Vatican newspaper.
Dr. Carlo Bellieni, a regular commentator on bio-ethics and health care issues, wrote on Feb. 19 that the lack of care is indeed “scandalous ... but not unexpected.”
He point out other reports to the English Parliament in recent years on the poor treatment available to mental patients, whom he characterized as “invisible” to national health system.
“In short, whomever is quietest receives a proportionately inferior treatment,” Bellieni said.
Neil Duncan-Jordan of the National Pensioners Convention told Britain's Daily Mail it is “absolutely shocking” that these causes are leading to so many deaths.
“What it shows is that a significant number of older people in our care homes are getting substandard, third-rate attention.”
He said he was struck by the fact that they died of poor diet, thirst or because they were not tended to well enough in bed and yet were likely paying the equivalent of around $1,300 (800 British pounds) per week.
“For them to be treated in that way is nothing sort of scandalous,” he said.
A separate report from the Health Service Ombudsman of the National Health Service released earlier in 2011 exposed 10 unfortunate stories of elderly patients who were neglected in hospitals. Some were kept for weeks or months with limited access to food, water and bathing.
In one case, a man's life support was unplugged before his sons were informed.
Of thousands of complaints at national health hospitals, a staggering majority of those investigated involved elderly patients.
Bellieni pointed out a study published in the “Journal of the American Medical Association” in 2000 further emphasized the point. Results of a survey showed that in a number of western nations, “the majority of doctors think that life with neurological disability, but also with a serious physical handicap is worse than death.”
This perspective, he said, is a “sign of a cultural wound, a profound moral discomfort that shows the disability not as something to overcome, but something intolerable, towards which one feels aversion, not compassion.”
Solutions are being sought for how to help them die and not for how to help them live better, he said.
“The issue of death with dignity is not how to rush it, but how to conquer pain and solitude,” said the doctor. “But a climate of terror towards a potential and improbable persistence of keeping (people) alive has been scientifically created.”
In the world today, “a generation of scared people” is being created that “only knows how to seek ways to defend themselves, to run for shelter, flee, looking at death as the last desperate consolation, because life has ultimately lost (its) meaning and attraction.”
This perspective leads people to seek “exit strategies” for lives that have become “cumbersome” to them, he explained.
Bellieni asserted that the “abandonment of the elderly ... is not a problem of malpractice but of cultural discomfort in the face of the sick ... as long as they are living.”
That should have been “how glitzy or pretty”. No one else will look after them with the attention to detail better than a child, niece or nephew, grandchild, etc. Medical treatment has also been rationed for decades. The elderly peoples’ voices are hard to hear and ignored in most cases. It takes a young, strong pair of lungs to speak up for them and fight for them, otherwise they die silently and painfully.
Could it also be the fault of the Brit’s NHS which has reduced patient care to bureaucratic blundering?
Hitler and Stalin called them “useless eaters”.
I’ve been trying to tell exactly that to my husband’s family.
They are totally snowed by the “caring” people at the retirement community.
When we were there a week ago, Mom fell in the bathroom. We pulled strings, pushed buttons and finally my daughters ran out to the nurse’s station. Alarms going off and no was was there. My husband bodily picked her up and got her to a chair.
After 10 minutes, an aide came in, smelling of cigarettes. She called a nurse who took Mom’s blood pressure. The aid then told Mom to make sure she called her before going to the bathroom. Mom has Alzheimer’s. Like she’s gonna remember that.
My FIL pays 2700.00 a month, out of pocket for her care + the billing to Medicare AND his supplemental BC/BS.
We are the ONLY ones who care for our family members.
I would take an elderly person over a 25 year old any day of the week. They were a better generation.
The overwhelming majority of people my age are nasty, shallow, selfish, amoral vermin.
It is going to get worse. Much worse.
The life span of my generation will be much shorter than my parents (both Boomers). There isn’t enough money to care for everyone, and most families don’t want to do it.
My mother in law is looking at coming to live with us, and I am happy about that. But most people will not do that.
The Boomers will have a very horrible end I am afraid.
I took care of both my parents at home in their final illnesses (with help from other families members as they were able) and my mother-in-law lives with me now. My son, as a teenager, took on the care of my mother for a number of years before I took over that job.
We can tell you that it has its pains and furstrations, but in the end it is worth it. When they pass on, you can be at peace with yourself and live your life without regret.
There is no easy or good “public” solution and it takes a great sacrifice on the part of children to attend to their parents. It usually falls primarily on one child in a multi-child family. I usually don't weigh in on these matters, unless I've been there, done that. I was the meat in the sandwich before they gave a generation that label.
Being an only child, I grew old in the matter of a decade taking care of my responsibilities as a single parent and caregiver to an elderly parent. When my mother died in my arms, I thought I was a complete failure. Several months later, I was amazed to find out I didn't have to walk like Quasimoto, the Bell Ringer, anymore. It's amazing how little you hurt when you don't have to lift the dead weight of another adult. I also had time on my hands when I didn't have to clean up “accidents” of a rather unsavory nature, empty commodes or give sponge baths. It's taken almost eight years to forgive myself for her dying, pay off the debt for her medications (medicare finally sent a letter two weeks after she died saying they'd help), but with all that, no one cared more or gave it all or could have cared more or given more.
It isn't about being fair, or the best, or anything like that. It's about being willing to make the sacrifice. You just can't pay someone else enough to make that kind of commitment.
>>You just can’t pay someone else enough to make that kind of commitment. <<
I have a lot of problems going on with this.
1. I’m the in-law. She and I have never gotten along but I still care about her well being. The family looks at me with suspicion
2. We are 2 1/2 hours away. We can go on weekends but not every day.
3. The family has been snowed by the “wonderful caring staff”
4. My FIL put them into the community and doesn’t want to make waves.
I’m stuck.
You have great hope in the Lord, now you must believe in Him to do the best and pray thankfully that He will. Put it in His hands and let it go. Believe, don't just hope. Lotsa people die in hope, but faith and believing overcome — even strained relations. I also speak from experience in this as well.
That’s where I’m sitting, I put it into God’s hands.
That’s where it always should have been. ;-)
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