Thursday, March 01, 2012

Doctors and nurses must not call an elderly patient 'dear'

Britain:
"Doctors and nurses should be banned from calling elderly patients ‘dear’, a panel of officials declares today.

Over the last eight months a team of officials from the NHS Confederation, the Local Government Association and charity Age UK have been compiling guidelines to improve the care of the elderly in hospitals and nursing homes.

The panel – the Commission on Improving Dignity in Care for Older People – says hospital staff should refrain from asking patients ‘how are we today dear?’.

In addition, they say doctors and nurses should stop reducing patients to illnesses labels or conditions – such as ‘that stroke over there’ or ‘the fractured femur in that bay’. In a joint statement, the authors of the report call for a ‘major cultural shift’ to ensure care is ‘patient-centred’ rather than ‘task-focused’.

Source

I can't see why friendly forms of address should be banned

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

In a joint statement, the authors of the report call for a ‘major cultural shift’ to ensure care is ‘patient-centred’ rather than ‘task-focused’.

They call for "patient-centered" care and also want to stop the use of an endearment (in fact the quintessential endearment term)?

Do they realize how stupid this makes them look?

Anonymous said...

Fear not. Soon, very soon, Sharia Law will prevail in all parts of Britain, not just in the growing number of radical Muslim communities. Then, the notoriously weak Brits will find their deep addiction to political correctness will very quickly be "cured". Beheadings have that effect.

Sig said...

You see, in keeping with Obamacare mentality, the Left simply wants the doctor or nurse to say to the patient, "Ah, number 56163-4254-631, I see that you are not yet dead. That will be corrected shortly as soon as our death panel convenes and reviews your case."

Anonymous said...

Dear 3:16 Are you using hyperbole for effect, or just being hypersilly?

Anonymous said...

Talking to the elderly in such a way can sound patronizing and treating old people as senile even if they are not, or like children which they are certainly not. I guess it also depends upon the tone of voice used.

Anonymous said...

Is the talk really patronizing, or is it just familiar? I know MANY elderly people who still have their full faculties who refer to other people as "dear" or "honey". Thanks to today's PC standards, it may sound condescending, they are really nothing more than terms of endearment and familiarity adopted at an earlier time when those terms were socially accepted.

Anonymous said...

@Anon 3:54 AM, no, he is definitely not being silly. He is being dead-serious. It is people like you with your head buried in the sand who are permitting Islam to take over where democracy once had a firm foothold.

Doubt it not! Sharia Law will soon be here, and it is absolutely not a matter of "if" but of "when".