Siobhancallingforoutof hourspalliativeservice
BRAY WOMAN WRITES OPEN LETTER TO MINISTER FOR HEALTH AFTER HER TERMINALLY-ILL MOTHER STRUGGLES TO BE SEEN OVER NEW YEAR WEEKEND
A Bray woman who was unable to get a doctor for her dying mother who was vomiting blood is calling for 24-hour palliative care in north County Wicklow.
‘Simon Harris is completely aware that standards even elsewhere in the country are unacceptable,’ said Siobhan Tobin from Avondale.
‘ This is his constituency, he should bring us up to the already inadequate standards the rest of the country has.
‘Death comes to everyone,’ she said. ‘But a person should be able to die in a dignified way.’
In a scathing open letter to Minister for Health Simon Harris, Siobhan described an ordeal which she and her mother Maureen Marren went through as they were unable to access out of hours medical care over the New Year’s weekend.
Minister Harris said in a letter to Siobhan that he is ‘deeply concerned’ about the issues she highlighted. He has contacted the HSE to seek a report on the overall handling of her mum’s care.
He acknowledged that ‘geographical variations currently exist in the availability of the full range of specialist palliative care services’.
Minister Harris said that implementations of recommendations to address that have started, including a national review of the need for 24/7 services.
Siobhan’s mother Maureen (76) has small cell lung cancer and is under the care of the Wicklow Palliative Care team. Maureen lives with Siobhan, her husband, and their three sons.
On December 28, her mother became quite unwell and a member of the palliative team came and organised a prescription for her with her GP.
On Friday, December 29, Siobhan spoke to the team again on the phone and they increased her mother’s dose of morphine, with a view to reviewing it on Tuesday, January 2, which was when they would be next available.
On the Saturday, Maureen began her first of five episodes of vomiting blood.
‘I phoned the out of hours GP service in the early afternoon and thus began the wait,’ said Siobhan.
That evening, her mother had not urinated for 24 hours. Unable to get a doctor, an acquaintance ‘stole’ a catheter kit from their workplace to bring to Siobhan. A nurse friend later came to the house to insert it.
The GP service told Siobhan that a doctor wouldn’t be available to attend to her mother as there were 147 other patients needing treatment.
‘I again explained that my mother is a palliative care patient who had been vomiting blood for 16 hours, and if a doctor didn’t present to her that I would ensure it would make the paper and every news programme the following day,’ Siobhan wrote in her letter to the minister.
A doctor then rang and said he would be there within 20 minutes. He administered an injection to stop Maureen’s vomiting.
On New Year’s Day, another doctor came to see Maureen but wouldn’t administer another injection as she had not vomited in some hours.
Siobhan asked what she could do if Maureen was sick again, given the fact that the service was so busy. She wrote that the doctor gave her ‘a vial, syringe and needle and [told] me to do it myself.’
The following day, the palliative care team attended and Maureen was admitted to Blackrock Hospice.
Siobhan is calling on the Minister to provide information on when out-of-hours palliative care will be available in the north Wicklow area.
‘ This situation in its entirety would have been avoidable by providing palliative care that is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,’ said Siobhan.
‘ The point of a family availing of palliative care is to avoid emergency ambulances, A&E waiting rooms, trolleys in corridors.
‘You are not facilitating this. You are actively preventing palliative care from working successfully by not providing a full time care service and coupling it with such a pathetic out of hours GP service.’
She said that if the family lived on Old Conna, there would be 24/7 care available.
‘I want to know exactly when we north Wicklow residents will have the luxury of not having to die during office hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays,’ said Siobhan.
Siobhan said that during the days outlined, she didn’t expect someone to come and save Maureen’s life, but merely ease her discomfort.
‘She has improved greatly since being admitted to the hospice and has been pain free for a number of days,’ said Siobhan.
‘She wants to be at home and could have been if there had been out-of-hours palliative care.
‘She is a wonderful human being, a capable woman, and she deserves to be cared for with dignity.’
Sinn Fein will be holding a protest calling for a GP out of hours service for North Wicklow at the Bray office of Simon Harris on Saturday, January 20 at 22 p.m.
‘In recent weeks, we have heard of horrific cases of people being left without emergency care outside of normal GP hours and the consequences of such. This is the very reason that this service is so badly and urgently needed,’ said Deputy John Brady.