Labour calls for end to blanket DNR letters to care home residents

Denying hospital admission to care home residents with coronavirus and issuing blanket notices to the elderly not to be resuscitated if they fall ill with Covid-19, denies people “equal right of access” and “the chance of life itself”, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard has said.

Scottish Labour has hit out at "blanket" letters suggesting care home residents not be given CPR if they contract coronavirus.

At First Minister’s Questions in Holyrood, Mr Leonard said care home residents were not receiving the same right to NHS treatment as others and called on Nicola Sturgeon to ensure they received all the medical help needed.

Raising the case of a woman encouraged to sign a Do Not Attempt CPR notice for her physically-fit husband, who has Alzheimer’s and is in residential care, he said: “Margaret does not want to sign such an order, yet has been told that ultimately the final decision on whether to administer treatment or send her husband to hospital will be the GP’s.

“Of course every single patient needs clinical judgement on an individual level. But why, when the capacity on NHS wards and in ICUs is there, are our care home residents being treated differently to other Covid-19 patients?”

Ms Sturgeon said: “Any person, whether in a care home, in their own home, should be treated as an individual if they have Covid-19. Treatment should be clinically driven, there should be no pre-determined approach.

“On the issue of Do Not Resuscitate, Margaret should not feel forced to sign such a document, nobody should be forced to, and we’ve been clear that these forms should not be issued in that way.”

However Mr Leonard said that not admitting care home residents to hospital was a sign that “not only a principle of our National Health Service” but also “a measure of our values as a society as well” was being violated.

“Just last week I was contacted about a standardised letter sent by a Glasgow GP practice to relatives of care home residents, saying there would be no transfers to hospital,” he told the chamber.

“The government has been content up until now to move vulnerable people out of hospitals and into care homes, so why is there still so much resistance to move vulnerable people out of care homes into hospitals when they need it.

“What will the First Minister do to make sure that that principle is applied and that those values are upheld even in the face of this pandemic?”

Ms Sturgeon said: “Anybody who needs to be in hospital, where that is the clinical judgement made about their care, should be in hospital, and that applies to care home residents as much as anyone else.

“Everybody deserves person-centred care that is right for them. For older people the clinical judgement might be they are better cared for in their own environment, but that should not be pre-determined, I am emphatic about that. The human rights aspects of everything we are doing are core to what we’re doing right now.”