A piece by Mary Wakefield in the current edition of The Spectator. The start:
We all think pretty highly of ourselves these days, free from old-fashioned ideas about sin. We’re good people. And yet… I read in a letter in a local newspaper recently a description of an event in the writer’s own home which shows that we might also be becoming monsters.
The letter-writer, Jane, was a lady in her late fifties who cared at home for a husband, Fred, with terminal brain cancer. As Jane’s letter explained, Fred had fallen recently on to the bathroom floor, and as she was unable to lift him, she telephoned for help. Seven medics arrived and rushed to the scene. All seven then stalled. Though Fred was not obese, though there were seven of them, they told Jane that they were not allowed to help him up.
Jane wrote: ‘I had two Marie Curie nurses, three district nurses, two paramedics and myself, all standing in a circle while they told Fred that he would have to try to get himself up from the floor… . Is this right, that in this day and age, a terminally ill man in great mental and physical distress, unable to comprehend why nobody would help him back to bed, is allowed to remain in terrible discomfort because the professionals involved are all too concerned about their own safety?’
Her letter ends: ‘I’m so tired of being told I need to look after myself, asked what my feelings and emotions are… and yet the patient, the person requiring practical assistance, my husband of 27 years, was just being talked over while he lay helpless on the floor for two hours.’
I simply cannot believe a woman with terminal brain cancer would have been left lying on a bathroom floor for two hours, by those seven people.
If everyone who read this gave us just £1 – or even better, £1 monthly – we could change the world. Click here to make a difference. Thanks.
Justice for Men & Boys 
I read the full story and noted that the social care service would lift. This is no surprise to me having worked in these sectors for may years. It brings up a number of issues.
a. The “professionalization” of health and in particular the Nursing Degree. The Care workers who will lift at most might have an NVQ. As so often observed the NHS is now full of people who see themselves supervising rather than being hands on with patients.
b. Practical issues of size. In hospitals male “orderlies” and increasingly male healthcare assistants used and are called upon to do “heavy lifting” , often of male patients who are generally the bigger patients. One part of the current obsession with equality is an insistence on ignoring the obvious; it would help to have some strong men handy. In the community in my experience social care might have called for some “muscle” from Policemen or Firemen. The former no longer likely to do so but Firemen still do (or did so up to last year where I worked). I think a great move would be to link Paramedic Services with Fire Service for these reasons. Sometimes one does need some muscle and “can do” attitudes. In the real world our care and nursing sectors will be largely female and it would make sense to acknowledge some of the basic practical consequences.
c. On a very basic level one can see time and again the very deep difference in response to female and male distress. In my experience a sort of “sea change” occurs for men over 65/70 its as though suddenly social doorway opens and suddenly its Ok to be a patient. Under that age in a load of much subtler ways the male patient is treated as if they’ve broken some social rules. Having observed behaviours in a sense is much like in schools, male patients are much more likely to be deemed “demanding” or “awkward” and much less likely to be “checked on”, in my experience.
I suspect the last point isn’t anything that is easy to address as its deep in our nature or nurture. But the first two really do looking at in terms of practical solutions for patients.
LikeLike
Amazing when you have to ask in the situation, in a time of “EQUALITY” would have outcome have been different if the sexes were reversed. The hypocrisy never ends, it’s like society has sexist blinders on.
LikeLike
This continues to happen because we men allow it to. Think about it…
LikeLike
despicable
LikeLike