[Margaret Pilkington]

Doug, glad to have you back and posting. I too have looked after dying patients, and while Nurses may strive to preserve the dignity of patients......and many believe they do actually do this.....if you question patients about whether they felt their dignity was preserved.....many of them will tell you they didn't feel this was their perspective. That is because dignity is such a SUBJECTIVE thing......because I feel a certain thing will preserve MY dignity, I mustn't fall into the trap of believing that my patient will want the same things.

And you are right Doug when you say that there is some excellent work going on in palliative care, but that it is patchy(in both quantity and quality), that is because the nursing profession do not share good practices very easily. Just before I left the Nursing profession I was involved in Benchmarking..... this was a system where nurses nationwide looked at professional practices and drew up Best Practice guidelines.....some of the issues that were thrown up opened my eyes......I don't know how far the work has got, but it was powerful stuff.