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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/18/all-that-is-good-in-human-nature-is-here-rachel-clarke-on-life-and-death-at-her-nhs-hospice Is there a good way to approach the end of life? Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor, believes there is – and that we can all learn from her patients She’s called Gemma. She’s three years old. She fell into a canal,” said a senior nurse. “By the time her parents managed to get her out, apparently she’d already stopped breathing.” “Paramedics three minutes away,” called another nurse, holding the scarlet phone on which emergencies were called through. With a grace and efficiency akin to choreography, a team of professionals who moments beforehand had been as disparate as atoms, dispersed across the hospital, were poised around an empty resuscitation bed, waiting as one to swing into action. The consultant quietly confirmed each team member’s role. The anaesthetist, responsible for airway. The scribe, who would note down, in meticulous detail, the timings, the drugs, the doses, every iota of care which, if we were lucky, might snatch life back from lifelessness. Doctor one, doctor two – the roles and responsibilities went on. Then, a moment of silence before the paramedics’ brute force pushed a trolley through the swing doors and there, tiny, limp and pale, lay a toddler, unmoving beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. Continue reading...
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