I have now had a chance to reflect on my concern over Liz Kershaw’s Sunday Times article (20th Feb), Cause of Death: the NHS (only accessible to those who to subscribe to the Times On-line).
It is about her experience of how NHS medical staff treated her 87-year-old dying grandfather.
She starts the piece by saying, ‘Tell you what: why don’t we just put a pillow over his face and finish him off? Day after day’, Liz continues, ‘I witnessed the deliberate withholding of nutrition that resulted in his ‘accelerated, yet agonising and undignified death.’
I too, have witnessed the death of an elderly person in an NHS hospital. He was my 87-year-old bull of a father who was struck down just over two years ago by a massive stroke. But, I had a completely different experience from Liz Kershaw, as I have also discussed in my book, The D-Word: Talking about Dying.
Sue Brayne - Author | Speaker | Podcast host 