Sir, - At a time when those of us in the medical profession are endeavouring to ensure that our judgements and conclusions are evidence-based, it is surprising to read Dr Denis J Donohoe's criticism (May 12th) of the BBC's and Lord Winston's forthcoming television series on life and death, when he has not in fact seen it.
Strangely, he also attacks the media for being voyeuristic, yet it was the self-same media who highlighted Dr Cecily Saunders's work on death and dying in the 1960s and 1970s, which brought about the modern hospice movement and the development of palliative care - Dr Donohoe's own speciality. Indeed it was RTE's focus on Harold's Cross in 1985, where Dr Donohoe works, which more than anything else inspired the development of modern palliative care countrywide.
The BBC film, which I have had the opportunity to preview, is, in my opinion, a caring, sensitive and dignified presentation. In it, a man with advanced cancer, with his full agreement, is followed through the last months, days and hours of his life, surrounded by the caring support of those who love him as well as the professional help of his attentive GP and hospice home care staff - all in the environs of his own home where he wanted to be. It is the best that any of us can hope for.
It is my understanding that one of the aims of the hospice movement was to remove the fear of death and make it "normal" again i.e. to rescue it from the modern western sanitisation that increases fear and complicates bereavement. In the film series a small girl, a neighbour, attends the bedside with a posy of flowers, indicating that children do not and indeed should not be "protected" from normal death.
Every night on our TV screens we see simulated death in its most horrific and undignified presentations. While studying and training in our state hospitals and institutions I, like many others, witnessed many deaths where the dying died on their own, not attached to a loving hand but only to drips, catheters, suction tubes and monitors.
Where shortage of staff, bedside screens and private rooms prevail, and where long wards are still in use, it is possible for the visiting public to unwittingly view people dying and on their own. Where I trained, nurses were reprimanded if they offered tactile comfort to male patients, even to the elderly, or if they sat with them on their beds.
The excellent radio production on the Magdalen unmarried mother's home, recently re-broadcast, recounted the death of an unmarried mother on her own, in a caring religious institution, without anyone in attendance to give her a drink of water. This happened not so long ago.
I would have thought that we have a lot of crusading yet to do here in Ireland to restore dignity to all death and dying. What the BBC has done is, in my view, a big step in the right direction and I hope that many of your readers, including Dr Donohoe, will get an opportunity to view it, when it is screened shortly . - Yours, etc., Padhraic O'Conghaile, MB,
Salthill, Galway.