NHS Breakdown: "Communication Breakdown" Results in Down Syndrome Patient Starving to Death
I feel like ripping my hair out! How can something like this happen in a civilized country? Martin Ryan, who could not swallow after a stroke, was allowed to lie in a bed and starve to death over a period of 26 days! And surprise, surprise--he had Down syndrome. From the story:
Mr Ryan, who had Down's syndrome, died in hospital in Kingston-upon-Thames. An internal inquiry by the hospital found that doctors had thought nurses were feeding him through a tube in his nose. By the time they found out this was not happening, he was too weak for an operation to insert a tube into his stomach.I am sorry, it can't rest with a mere "our bad," kind of analysis! At best, this was criminal neglect, if it was neglect: I don't believe it is a coincidence that Martin had Down syndrome. I mean, how can anyone starve to death over nearly a month in a hospital and it go unnoticed? Questions must be answered. What was done when the "mistake" was discovered to try and help him? And why was he allowed to "die in agony?"
He died in agony five days later. Mr Ryan's distraught family, from Richmond, South-west London, are convinced he could have been saved by the correct treatment.
One relative said of him: 'Martin will always be the light of my life. He had a quirky sense of humour and oodles of charm. He was often smiling--he loved to go out, liked the movement of the coach and listening to the music.
This travesty should be investigated at the highest levels of government until the full truth is known!
Labels: NHS Meltdown. Patient With Down Syndrome Starved to Death
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:11 PM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
This story is horrifying. I find it criminal as you do and sadly expected. If the man did not have DS would he have starved to death? Not a chance. This simply reinforces why people with disabilities consider the medical system and hospitals a fearful place. The odds we will needlessly die or be neglected is very real.
How could the doctors think he had an NG tube if he didn't have an NG tube? I mean,it's not the sort of thing you can hide. They could just have looked at him and said, "Oh, hmm, he doesn't have an NG tube dropped." It's not like they take it out after every feeding. They put it in and tape it down in place. Duh. The doctors obviously just didn't care.
And I'm dubious about this "took weak to have a PEG tube inserted" stuff, too. And did they then, finally, put the NG tube in, or was he left with _nothing_ for the final five days after they found out what was happening? And why wasn't his family making a big fuss during this whole time? He obviously needed a patient advocate, if anyone does.
Lydia, You are getting bogged down in the details of the case despite the fact I agree it is hard to fathom why no one intervened. Blame is less important than the social significance of what transpired.
If a hospital has decided it wants someone to die, no matter how good a job the advocate does, the advocate may not be able to prevail. I could give examples of instances that have occurred along similar lines. At the very least the hospital is admitting to parlous disorganization and negligence, and in fact it looks more like a case of blame the nurses by doctors and a hospital who didn't want the patient to live, and that that's why no one intervened. I see the social significance of what transpired as the widespread opinion, on the part of both doctors and society, that a disabled and/or elderly person is not supposed to live, and as the willingness of society to regard doctors, hospitals, and the medical establishment with more respect than they deserve, and to delegate to them the enactment of society's prejudice against the elderly and the disabled.
From what I've seen, it can be a huge mistake to expect a hospital to be the place of care one has a right to expect it to be. As long as insurance pays the bills, doctors and hospitals are not directly accountable to the patient, the person to whom service is being provided and who could refuse to pay for poor service otherwise. I don't think medical costs would be as high as they are if insurance were not in the mix; of course, people are shilled into believing that insurance is necesssary because costs are high, and fearing not having insurance' that way, the whole racket can keep going with "health care corporations" and insurance companies profiting. It's like credit cards -- no longer a direct contact and relationship between buyer and seller, the buyer is gouged, and the banks clean up. At least with credit cards one can cancel payment for poor service, but that's re people who are well and walking around; patients are completely helpless and have no form of leverage whatsoever. Then we wonder why medical care is not what it should be and malpractice is rampant (with the insurance company lawyers, who get paid no matter what and can bill for a lot of hours for defending malpractice cases, making matters worse). The Chinese tradition was that if the patient did not get well, the doctor had to pay the patient. What we've got now is the doctor/hospital gets paid no matter what and feels entitled to proceed without conscience or due diligence, and it's no longer the patient who is the priority. Look what's happened in Britain where the National Health has precluded the direct patient/doctor/hospital relationship. After years of insurance being a major player in the mix, in people's jobs, in medicine, which has as a result become a business rather than a profession, look at the mess both "health care" and "the economy" are in. The man on the street, asked, often enough will name those two issues as the country's worst problems. Absent insurance, costs would come down, and the medical establishment would have to be more accountable to patients. By the way, I may have missed it in the news, but while one company and industry after another is failing, I haven't heard about the insurance industry collapsing -- and that's the one whose collapse would be a benefit.
I wasn't so much meaning to get "bogged down" in details as to point out that the details that would have to apply do not support even the weak attempts the hospital is making to excuse itself. E.g. "The doctors thought the nurses were feeding him by a tube through his nose." Not plausible. Someone either has one or doesn't. Then, the implication that once the neglect was found out, there was nothing they could do. Nonsense. He could have been rehydrated at that time and fed as well. That he should have suffered five more days of agony and died in the end even _after_ they knew he was starving to death is, if possible, more outrageous than the initial neglect and sounds to me like it involved an outright attempt to make sure he died even after they got caught neglecting him.
Lydia -- I didn't think you were getting bogged down in details, and you're right -- he could have been rehydrated and given tpn iv feeding. I agree that this sounds like an outright attempt to make sure he died, even after they got caught, and I don't think it's an isolated incident, or that this kind of event is confined to that hospital, or to the U.K.
This scenario is the chief nightmare of those of us who are mothering a child with Down syndrome, a child whom the Nazis,and perhaps some British medical personnel deemed, "life unworthy of life".
We kill 90% of these wonderful people before birth; is it so shocking that we also kill some after birth?
Leticia: That is why this must not be seen "merely" as a case of medical indifference. MUCH must be made of it in the UK. Urgently.
And here. And of all the other cases, both there and here, in which it's happened to the elderly and the disabled.
Wesley, do you agree that the claim that it was accidental seems a little fishy? I know you're a lawyer and will want to be careful what you say, but it just doesn't add up. How could they possibly not know he wasn't being fed for that long? How could the doctors think he had an NG tube when they had only to look at him to see that he didn't? The nurses _must_ have known.
I agree that the fact that he had Down's is relevant, but I also know that here in the U.S. there's quite a tendency not to feed and hydrate people who cannot swallow after a stroke, so it may also have been a bias against stroke victims unable to eat naturally.
Lydia: I'm long past forgetting to be careful what I say, and of course it doesn't add up; I don't think that it was any accident. I've seen the same tendency not to feed and hydrate when there is difficulty swallowing, and I think it was a bias in both directions. When I kept bringing to doctors' attention that there are techniques to help the patient regain the ability to swallow, and they were ignored. In that situation, they were sure there had not been a stroke, but the ability to swallow had been diminished, and they refused to feed. Bunch of damned murderers. When I talked to an expert in those techniques at another institution, she told me that "the doctors wouldn't know about them." Well, isn't that nice; they know so much that they must know everything, and when something outside their frame of reference is brought to their attention, it therefore must not exist. It's disgraceful.
It also speaks to the overall underlying futilitarian, life-devaluing agenda, as well as to medical arrogance in general, that such techniques exist and are well known by speech-and-swallow therapists, but the speech-and-swallow therapists at the same hospital did not seem to know about them, and the doctors either hadn't bothered to find out about them or were lying, which is another thing that happens a lot.
It also speaks to the overall underlying futilitarian, life-devaluing agenda, as well as to medical arrogance in general, that such techniques exist and are well known by speech-and-swallow therapists, but the speech-and-swallow therapists at the same hospital did not seem to know about them, and the doctors either hadn't bothered to find out about them or were lying, which is another thing that happens a lot.
And what's the matter with doctors that they wouldn't know that techniques exist to help a patient learn to swallow again? If that's not incompetence, shoddiness, arrogance, bad attitude, and/or dishonesty, I don't know what is. Yet they get paid to save lives and enjoy the respect of those who regard them as savers of lives. Disgraceful.
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