"How not to hold an end of life discussion"

Earlier this year, on arriving for a night time visit at hospital, my sister was taken aside by a nurse and advised that a doctor wanted to speak to her before she went to see her husband on the ward. My sister had asked to speak to a doctor a couple of days earlier when she discovered that her frail elderly and immobile husband, who was lying in a bed with barriers each side, had somehow managed to fall in the hospital whilst under continuous oversight and assessment. She was worried he may have suffered serious injury from it. 

When she arrived at the room, she was told that her husband's death could come very soon. She was told she had options and was asked what she wanted to do. My sister was in shock and in deep distress at the time, and she has told us since that she felt under tremendous pressure to answer there and then. 

Ever since her husband's death, my sister has been saying that she will never forgive herself for the decisions she took that night. I am staying with her at weekends as we are all concerned about the impact of the whole experience on her mental health. 

Had she known that a doctor wanted to speak to her that night, our family would have made sure that she wouldn't face the meeting alone. The sad fact is that she really didn't need to. Leaving the ward around noon that day, my sister advised the nurses' station that she would be coming back for an evening visit. A phone call from the hospital saying a doctor wanted a word would have allowed us to put support arrangements in place.

A few years back, my husband came with me when I was going to get cancer test results. Clinic staff had suggested that people often preferred to be accompanied when coming to important hospital meetings. So I find myself asking, if Ayrshire Central staff know how to handle very stressful situations, could staff at UH Ayr learn from them?

By the by, remember the request for some doctor's time to discuss the hospital fall? It never happened.