(December 6, 2021 at 12:40 pm)Lawz Wrote: Thank you all for the responses - as brewer points out (thankfully) I might be conflating permanent vegetative state with total locked in syndrome and I am not aware of the specific diagnoses for the utterly paralysed residents. I've only been working there two weeks - rollercoaster, thy name is care work.
Just to say, Boru me old mucker, this is far from clean cut straight forward type stuff as your comment appears. From wiki on permanent vegetative state:
Quote:Lack of legal clarity[edit]
Unlike brain death, permanent vegetative state (PVS) is recognized by statute law as death in only a very few legal systems. In the US, courts have required petitions before termination of life support that demonstrate that any recovery of cognitive functions above a vegetative state is assessed as impossible by authoritative medical opinion.[5] In England, Wales and Scotland, the legal precedent for withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration in cases of patients in a PVS was set in 1993 in the case of Tony Bland, who sustained catastrophic anoxic brain injury in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.[4] An application to the Court of Protection is no longer required before nutrition and hydration can be withdrawn or withheld from PVS (or 'minimally conscious' – MCS) patients.[6]
This legal grey area has led to vocal advocates that those in PVS should be allowed to die. Others are equally determined that, if recovery is at all possible, care should continue. The existence of a small number of diagnosed PVS cases that have eventually resulted in improvement makes defining recovery as "impossible" particularly difficult in a legal sense.[7] This legal and ethical issue raises questions about autonomy, quality of life, appropriate use of resources, the wishes of family members, and professional responsibilities.
It’s clean cut straight forward as far as I’m concerned.
But you raise fair points, which is why everyone should have a living will/DNR.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
