A good death with friends and family
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 9 August 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
Should friends and family be trained to give potent medications to those dying at home to relieve their symptoms?
We often say that we’d like to die peacefully at home when the inevitable happens. Yet people can be left in pain for hours waiting for a doctor or nurse to be free to visit and administer the medicines that ease our symptoms in our final days. James Gallagher speaks to Mark, who was trained to administer medicines to his mother to help keep her comfortable at the end of her life, and to palliative care doctor Marlise Poolman who is pioneering the programme across North Wales.
Presenter: James Gallagher Producer: Beth Eastwood
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenna and good news, Your Dead to Me is back for a new series. Here we go. Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Marybeard and Patton Oswald. I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dor-Leon with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very quickly knocked down. And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Mosniak and Rihalina. I'm excited. You're dead to me. The comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Hello there and welcome to the Inside Health podcast. I'm James Gallagher. And regulars will know we spend a lot of time chatting about life, medical breakthroughs and how to keep healthy and happy. But no matter how hard we try, eventually our mortality catches up with us. And in our dying days, we often wish for it to be peaceful and at home rather than in a hospital. |
| 0:56.7 | This episode, we're exploring how friends and family are being taught to help provide end-of-life care |
| 1:02.6 | so that loved ones get the death they want. |
| 1:06.1 | It's an idea that's just starting to take off around the UK. |
| 1:09.9 | And despite this being a potentially distressing topic, |
| 1:12.9 | or maybe because of it, |
| 1:15.3 | the boundless love you're about to hear is something quite beautiful. |
| 1:21.4 | When my mum was feeling sick and was in pain, |
| 1:24.3 | I could have managed to that all my brother, |
| 1:26.3 | and you could see the difference within the half an hour. |
| 1:29.5 | And that was so nice for me and my dad to see and my brother |
| 1:32.5 | that my mum was getting the best care that we could give her. |
| 1:36.3 | If you got in pain and you're having to wait hours, |
| 1:38.4 | you can see the suffering that my mum would be going through |
| 1:42.0 | while we're waiting for someone to come and |
| 1:44.9 | sort out the medication. So it was a nice thing to be able to make that time as comfortable |
| 1:50.7 | and pain free as possible. In some ways it is a big change, but in the area where I now work, |
| 2:00.3 | where it is part of routine practice, |
| 2:02.9 | it just enhances the ability to be sure that people are very well looked after at home when they |
| 2:10.2 | die. To see it in action, to hear the feedback, and to know just how big a difference it's made to their lives. |
| 2:19.3 | It is a great privilege for me. |
| 2:23.5 | That's Mark and Malice and we'll get to know them both a lot more in a moment. |
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