Tag Archives: cancer

'My legacy will be a celebration of NHS care'

March 3, 2014   Cancer, Carers

Dr Kate Granger, a hospital registrar with an incurable cancer and months to live, will today present nursing awards in her honour

 

Terminally ill Kate Granger with her husband Chris

By Victoria Lambert

6:05AM GMT 03 Mar 2014

When Dr Kate Granger, a 32-year-old junior doctor specialising in elderly medicine, found herself on a gurney with a kidney infection in a Leeds NHS hospital last August, she couldn’t help noticing that, professional though the staff were, not all of them seemed to remember they were dealing with real people rather than anonymous patients.

“As I looked around the emergency department,” she explains in her soft Yorkshire accent, “I was struck how, for the most part, not one of the doctors or nurses or support staff introduced themselves. But when they did, it made such a difference to the person who was there to receive care.”

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Older cancer patients ‘should not be written off’

January 24, 2014   Cancer, Carers, Older care, ukcuts

24 January 2014 Last updated at 10:34

Older cancer patients should not be “written off” as too old for treatment, a charity has warned.

Macmillan Cancer Support said decisions on care should be made based on a patient’s fitness, not their age.

It cited data which suggests 130,000 people over 65 diagnosed with cancer between 1991-2010 survived for more than 10 years.

NHS England acknowledged that it needed to deliver better services to people in the over-65 age group.

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Dying patients should be exempt from social care charges

January 15, 2014   Cancer, Carers, dementia, Social care, ukcuts
We need to talk about end-of-life care so fewer people face a lonely death in hospital. Free social care would be a start

theguardian.com,

 

A massage therapist works on the feet of a terminally ill hospice resident.

This week the care bill committee is debating who should be eligible for social care. MPs will also consider whether to add a clause that would enable exemption from social care charges for those at the end of their lives.

The amendment would also establish the need for better forward planning about where we would like to die. Most of us would prefer to be at home surrounded by the people we love, yet fewer than one in three are currently able to do so.

Why is it that 89% of those who die in hospital do so following an unplanned admission? In many cases it is because of the sheer exhaustion that comes with providing around-the-clock care. At the end of life there may be a period of days, but sometimes far longer, of complete dependency. Families go to enormous lengths to cope but, especially where there is only one person in a position to provide care, the elastic can only stretch so far.

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