[Margaret Pilkington]

A-B, the Acronym you were searching for is DNR.....Do not resuscitate. I worked mainly on the Gynae Ward (women's bits) and although I have nursed very many terminally ill women, it was very difficult to get Consultants to append notes with the DNR.....however, there is a maxim, cliche.....whatever you want to call it, and it goes like this.....'Thou Shalt not kill, but need not strive officiously to keep alive'........but in practice, I can't say that I have seen it used.

The ladies that I nursed were kept as comfortable as we could make them..... that is not to say that death was either peaceful, or painless.....in a great many cases it was neither, and I can't tell you how impotent, as a nurse, it makes you feel. In many cases the ladies were well known to us and had been in and out of hospital many times. I don't care what anyone says, you cannot divorce your feelings.....and personally I wouldn't have wanted to because when you have empathy for the patient it doesn't disable you.....it makes you give care with love......and that is all that I could say about the subject......the ladies who died in my care were cared for with love..... and their dying always made me feel sad and a little diminished by their loss.