Nationalized Healthcare Anyone?

from England and the SUN:

Dear Tom, sorry you died

THE NHS has written to a DEAD MAN to apologise for leaving him to die in agony - 3½ YEARS AGO.

Tom Milner, 76, was not given his prescribed pain-relieving morphine for terminal leukaemia in his last two days, his family say.

He was left writhing in agony and lay in his own urine and blood at The NHS [National Health Service] Palliative Care Ward at Sheffield's Northern General Hospital.

His daughter Janet Brooks wrote and signed a letter to the National Patients Safety Agency outlining her concerns about his treatment. Janet, 54, said: "They responded with 'Dear Tom'. It's an example of the careless and shambolic attitude by the NHS towards my father and our family.

"We wanted his last days to be as peaceful and dignified as possible but at one point he was twisting and turning, laying in blood and urine. There was no compassion."

Two MPs wrote to the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for answers, but to no avail.

Hilary Scholefield, the Trust's Chief Nurse, said a review found that staff had treated electrician Tom "appropriately and professionally".

Palliative care is the care given to someone who completely terminal, who has exhausted all reason means of cure. Nothing wrong with palliative care, in fact my mother went on that after her massive stroke. Even when she was given full blown care her body started shutting down so we read the "read leaves" and put her on palliative. The idea behind palliative is to ease your discomfort, to let the body go through the death process which it'll naturally fight even when the brainwaves have ceased.

Sounds like the "account" had run out of the "free care" at the hospital.

Let us pray for Tom.