Current Petitions

Item 3 is consideration of 10 current petitions. PE1056 by Gordon, Jane and Steven McPherson is on DVT. Trish Godman has been waiting very patiently—over to you, Trish.

I am not going to say much but what fascinates me about the issue raised in the petition is that, despite the fact that medical people knew about the condition and how to treat it, they were not dealing with it. What happened to Katie McPherson is sad and unfortunate.There have been a lot of moves since the committee first considered the petition, but I have to say that I am not 100 per cent satisfied with the results. Last year, for example, the RCN made it quite clear that the problem simply cannot be left to the medics and that there must be continuous assessment by nursing staff. I have discussed the issue with the minister, who said that although she had no objection to the formation of a group similar to the one that exists down south, comprising nurses, medics and a dedicated pharmacist, she had no plans to put it in place herself. Such an approach has been taken in Oxford, and the RCN did very well when it made that the main thrust of its work in this area.Clinicians are now being asked to look at the Grampian risk assessment tool and at family history, which is an issue in which Jane, Gordon and Steven McPherson are very interested. It did not seem to be a well-known aspect; indeed, when the question arose whether anyone else in the family had the condition, the doctor did not know anything about it.Although things have come on, I would have liked the matter to have been tidied up a bit more. The committee could, for example, flag it up in its legacy paper, because we have to examine the changes that have been made so far and the commitment made by clinicians to look at the matter carefully, carry out the assessment and bring people back after a certain number of days if they are not happy. We do not know what the result of all that is going to be; I do not know, for example, whether the procedure will need to be tightened up. I received an indication from the NHS in Dundee that, although it had set up a programme it did not have the appropriate codes—the NHS has a system of codes for different things. I have written to the minister about that, but I have not yet received a response and I do not know where things stand in that respect. As a result, there are a few loose ends that I am not totally happy about.What the committee will do is, of course, a matter for it, but, as I have said, DVT is not a mysterious illness that nobody knows how to fix or sort out. It is known how people get it. Families are now looked at, and who is more at risk should be known, but no group like the English group has been set up. Nurses clearly say to me that they will do the work, as clinicians will not bother with it, but I do not know what the result will be. I do not think that things are as tight as they are in England.17:00

I am sure that we can suggest that. Do members agree that we should keep the petition open, as there is more work to be done on it?Members indicated agreement.

I thank Trish Godman for attending.