The ML Editor

Palliative care (end of life care) is any variety of health treatment or care which focuses on scaling down the severity of physical symptoms, instead of endeavouring to cure the person completely. The aim is to stop and alleviate the pain and discomfort while improving the actual day-to-day life for individuals confronting critical illness.

Yet, not all end of life health care services are identical in the quality they provide, and there has been plenty of accusations - and verified cases - of carelessness (and even abuse) occurring in care centres that lead to individuals sustaining great pain and discomfort over protracted periods of time. For example an accusation is made against Northern General Hospital who are accused of neglectfulness with a particular patient they were looking after, with inside information of communications between the sufferer’s daughter and the National Health Service.

Thus one mustn’t be complacent when putting our loved ones in the charge of others - friends and family of a person going into an institution ought to be watchful and make sure their loved one gets professional care.

If your friend or family member is getting care via the National Health Service, there is an NHS complaints procedure one can observe should you wish to make a complaint.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 6:56 am and is filed under Improving Your Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.