In My Own Bed Please: Staying at home with Covid-19
May 26, 2020
Introducing a new blog from In My Own Bed Please
Dr Lyn Jenkins
Correspondence to: lynjenkins100@aol.com
In My Own Bed Please is an independent group of medical practitioners and researchers campaigning on behalf of those who would choose to stay in their own homes, rather than go into hospital, should they develop severe Covid-19 disease. The group also includes laymen who represent the point of view of patients. We are particularly concerned about the availability of palliative care for our elderly relatives who have expressed their considered wish to stay at home.
Our objectives are to identify and help correct any failings in palliative care provision; to provide information on how to access what is available; and to ensure that the vulnerable are aware that they have the choice to stay in their home.
So far we have lobbied the government here and here and attempted to raise public awareness via the media (here and here [19:50 onwards]) and a petition. We have also written some imagined scenarios that illustrate best and worst outcomes, and recorded conversations which highlight some of the dilemmas in making the choice to stay at home. Questionnaires for carers and doctors will be made available shortly in order to gather information about the fast changing situation across the UK.
We are now beginning a series of blogs, to be posted on the CEBM website, which will explore further questions and evidence around palliative care for Covid-19 away from hospital. These questions will be placed on the CEBM Evidence Service (search “Palliative care”), so that when new evidence emerges we can comment. In this way we hope to make it more accessible to readers without specialist medical knowledge.
The first of these blogs on the role of oxygen in palliative care at home is available here.
Dr Lyn Jenkins (edited by Ruth Waterman)
Disclosure statement: General Practitioner – Great Missenden – (1979 – 2006), Hospital Practitioner – Diabetic Retinopathy Service – Stoke Mandeville Hospital (1977-2000), Primary Care Ophthalmologist – The Practice Ophthalmology Service – (2006-2014), Bereavement Support Volunteer – Cruse – (2018-2020), Amateur violinist and luthier, No competing interests to declare.
In My Own Bed Please working group
Sir Iain Chalmers DSc, FFPM
Former health services researcher, co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration
Dr Peggy Frith MD, FRCP, FRCOphth
Former consultant physician/ophthalmologist, former Deputy Director of Clinical Studies at the Oxford University Medical School,
Dr Iona Heath CBE, FRCGP
Former GP, writer, past president of the Royal College of General Practitioners,
Dr Lyn Jenkins MA(Cantab), BM BCh(Oxon), MRCOphth
Former GP/ophthalmologist, bereavement support volunteer
David Waterman PhD(Cantab)
Cellist of the Endellion Quartet, teacher, writer
Ruth Waterman
Writer, solo violinist, former Professor of Music at City University of New York
