Letters: Country and town are in this together

End-of-life plans

Sir: Charles Moore writes about his neighbour with poor lung function being telephoned about a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ order (Notes, 18 April). Even today when I discuss end-of-life plans with patients in A&E, many immediately think that medical staff are giving up on them. Nothing could be further from the truth. What are actually called DNA-CPR decisions do not stop treatment for a health condition. What it does is say that if this patient were to die, then chest compressions (which often break ribs) and intubation will in all likelihood not work, and that allowing the natural end of life to occur peacefully is better.

Part of the reforming of the health and social care landscape after the Covid-19 situation has passed will be explaining to the public just what these documents are for. In hospitals now, a DNA-CPR decision is accompanied by another form which outlines after discussion with the patient and/or family what the limit of treatments should be. Such treatment escalation plans are of benefit, as they show all the treatments that the clinical team feel will have maximum benefit.
Dr David Shackleton
London W13

Keep your admiration

Sir: Douglas Murray (‘I love my strange, disagreeable tribe’, 25 April) says he has no idea whether I am right or wrong about whether the government has acted correctly over the coronavirus. Why on earth not? I have not endured having a hundred buckets of slime tipped over my head over the past few weeks to provide a sort of sporting spectacle for Douglas or anyone else to enjoy. I do not argue for the sake of it. I loathe the abuse and the solitude as much as anyone might expect me to. I see my country in danger of grave and lasting threats to its freedom and its prosperity. I fear a future of over-mighty officials and police displaying the unbridled insolence of office, a dead political consensus, combined with confiscatory tax, shrivelled savings and pensions, lower wages and standards of living, and diminished hopes for the young.