Some doctors lacking sensitivity

I COULD not believe, reading Holly Wells’ story in the Chronicle this week, that doctors have still not had any training on how to treat people as humans.

After a long harrowing time in 1999/2000, my mam was finally taken back into hospital.

This was on a Sunday. One of my brothers rang our sister, Sheila, in New Zealand, to get home as soon as possible. By the Monday they had put my mam on a morphine drip, she had lung/bowel cancer.

As the eldest of six children the ward sister came into the room and asked to speak to me. The gist of the conversation was ‘do you want us to resuscitate your mam’ and keep talking to her as they think the hearing is the last thing to go.

We told mam that Sheila was on her way from New Zealand.

In the early afternoon a doctor and nurse came in to check on mam, who by now was fading fast, but she kept hanging on, she knew her daughter was on her way from New Zealand.

As the doctor walked up the corridor with a nurse she said ‘isn’t Mrs Brown taking a long time to die?’

I heard her loud and clear so I went to find her but the ward sister got to her first. They had just told us that the hearing was the last sense to go.

My mam ‘hung on’ all night and the police got her to the hospital at 9.50am, she squeezed my sister’s hand and

went five minutes later. So yes, something needs to be done to train these doctors! ROSEMARY ROBSON, Consett