It’s attention-grabbing to notice that England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, talks about high quality of life (Prioritise high quality of life over prolonging it for aged, Chris Whitty tells medics, 10 November) in the identical week that Simon Jenkins says that he has been pressured to show off the information as a result of he finds it too stunning. It’s straightforward to neglect that high quality of life is set as a lot by psychological angle as it’s by bodily, medical and monetary circumstances. I’m 77, and I be part of with Simon in a powerful want to guard my psychological well being.
Whitty urges households to not shrink back from conversations with older relations. We additionally want conversations with the youngest in society concerning the significance of way of life elements resembling train, weight loss program and the dangerous results of cigarettes, medication and alcohol. The unhealthy habits don’t begin in outdated age.
Maybe we’d like a GCSE on “good residing”. It may very well be based mostly on snapshots of the standard of life that an individual would possibly anticipate each decade in the event that they adopted numerous existence and habits.
David Diprose
Thame, Oxfordshire
As a palliative care physician, I discovered it extremely refreshing to see the chief medical officer prompting a vital dialog that should occur. What issues most to an individual ought to be central when they’re nearing the top of life.
Clinicians of all specialisms shouldn’t be afraid to have trustworthy and sensible conversations with their sufferers concerning the potential advantages and burdens of therapies.
Moreover, research present that well timed entry to palliative care can enhance each high quality and amount of life in contrast with extra invasive therapies.
Dr Sarah Holmes,
Chief medical officer, Marie Curie
There appears to be an assumption that all of us need to stay for ever with out anyone asking us if that’s the case. For some, medicine is useful for ache reduction and sustaining a constructive state of well being.
For others, the truth is completely different. All too usually the perfect we are able to hope for is to finish up in a pile of blankets in a wheelchair in a wildly costly care house, pushed round by an exhausted and underpaid carer. No marvel that some critically contemplate binning the capsules and potions and letting nature take its course.
Ruth Lewis (virtually 90)
Potters Bar, Hertfordshire
I’m delighted that Cubicles is eradicating self-service tills from the vast majority of its shops (Report, 10 November). My mom lived alone in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, till she was 102 and visited the native Cubicles retailer day by day. It was a serious a part of her social contact and she or he knew private particulars of all of the checkout workers. When she died 10 years in the past, aged 104, two of the checkout workers from Cubicles attended her funeral.
I’m undecided how good the day by day chatter was for Cubicles’ earnings, however was actually good for my mom. I hope different supermarkets will observe go well with as I dislike the concept of a self-service until attending my funeral.
Felicia Olney
London
