dignity champions

It's good, easy to read, all the relevant points covered.
Well done

Liz, at a quick run through it seems sensible as objectives - but

•Listen to and understand the views and experiences of citizens

sort of indirectly implies that dignity champions are professionals. I know that your overall piece does not say that all champions are professionals.

I am haggling with 'the system' about EoL/CPR/VoD issues, and my main objection is that professional guidance does not 'look correct' when you read it as a lay person: for example, a lot of the guidance written for paramedics, is very insulting and offensive if you read it as a live-with relative of an EoL (as in final year) patient who is at home.

I cannot say that there is a universal willingness for PCTs, SHAs, the RCN, ASs, Coroners and the Police, to enter into serious discussion about the creation of professional guidance which looks better when read by the relative sof dying patients - but while policy/protocol design does not have a direct input from lay people, it will continue to be 'biased towards what is easiest for professionals' and 'away from a 'neutral' interpretation of the law and logic'.

The recent NCEPOD report 'Time to Intervene ?' had a foreword by its chair, who is a lawyer - he commented that he suspects many resuscitationa ttempts would be viewed as assault, if they actually were tested in the courts.

It is a huge problem, getting coherent behaviour across different professional groups and also incorporating the perspective of people such as relatives, who are isolated, do not usually understand the law or what professional guidance says, and effectively are being bullied by defensive behaviour at present.

Just a thought.

Hi Liz
The only thing I would question is
Treat others as you would expect to be treated.

What if my expectations are lower than the person I am
caring for, surely that means I am not treating them
with either respect or dignity

Shelagh

Mike
Many thanks for these comments, it was not our intention to sond as if it was aimed at professionals and I'll certainly take your comments back to the group.
Liz

Shelagh
a good point, I guess when we were puklling this together we all had the chance to talk through expectations and were sort of thinking about high expectations in terms of how we would like to be treated. We'll need to thinkg this through.
Liz

Shelagh's comment is true as a generality - but things such as the now in-vogue 'Relative Test' always invoke a sort of 'somewhat-better-than-average' expectation, of what 'a person' would find acceptable.

I don't think you can avoid the issue Shelagh raises, and it is the same one as 'trial by peers' - clearly you do not expect a jury for a robbery, to be composed of people who consider robbery as justifiable.

Liz, if you want to understand my 'the perspectives look different' point, then although my discussion with the NHS is not about the stuff usually dsicussed on the DIC site, the PDF I've just sent to Ambulance Services (downloadable in my recently posted forum piece called 'Is speaking awkardness to authority a role for champions ?' - with the typo) asks their EoL leads 3 questions, and my prediction is they will not be able to answer any of them satisfactorily !

Relatives, especially live-with relatives, often feel rather like the ball within a game of football, being kicked from A to B without any control. And if you try to join in with the game, by learning the rules, it is often as if the game suddenly changes from football to rugby, with nobody having told you - in other words, the 'rules' change and the effect of this is to confuse relatives, and to persuade them that the professionals are either incompetent or stupid. That isn't helpul, for complex situations ! It leads to long-lasting 'anger at the system'.

Heyah Liz,

Really like the document. Need to try implement at the care home I currently work at. Any ideas???

And where it says: enable positive risk tasking? Shouldn't that be risk taking?

Dannie (:

Liz,

Just out of interest, I have a question for you.

Your file has been downloaded 123 times, you invited comments, but you have received very few comments.

Do you find it soemwhere between frustrating and depressing, that it is hard to attract comments (I do, because without fairly detailed feedback, I can't work out what other people think, and where their thinking differs from mine, and what 'the average/consensus view is', etc) ?