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Trial By Error: After Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s Death, More Concerns About Severe ME Patients at NHS Hospitals
28 February 2023 by David Tuller Leave a Comment
By David Tuller, DrPH
Trial By Error: After Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s Death, More Concerns About Severe ME Patients at NHS Hospitals
28 February 2023 by David Tuller Leave a Comment
By David Tuller, DrPH
I recently wrote an article for Codastory.com about Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died from complications of severe ME in October, 2021, after three separate admissions to her local National Health Service hospital in Exeter, England. During her hospital stays, she and her family fought with the hospital over the need for tube-feeding or an alternate approach called total parenteral nutrition that bypasses the digestive system altogether.
Conflicts involving malnutrition are also at the crux of a dispute involving Alice Barrett, a current patient in the same facility, the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. The issue is the hospital’s tube-feeding policy, which requires patients to be able to sit up at an incline of at least 30% in order to minimize the risk of complications like aspiration pneumonia. This policy conforms to standard medical practice.
The family met with hospital staff today but so far no resolution to the impasse has been found, Debbie Barrett, Alice’s mother, told me.