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ICU Nurse's Research On Near Death Experiences
nethwen
Posts: 23,374 Forum Member
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545668/Is-proof-near-death-experiences-ARE-real-Extraordinary-new-book-intensive-care-nurse-reveals-dramatic-evidence-says-banish-fear-dying.html
^ This is a very interesting article by Dr Penny Sartori, a British Intensive Care nurse, and her seven-year clinical study on dying patients and their near death experiences.
And her new book due to be released next month:
The Wisdom of Near Death Experiences: How Understanding NDEs Can Help Us to Live More Fully
I hadn't heard of this lady before reading the above DM article. I'll definitely be buying her book, though, as I have a personal interest in NDEs. My mother had one.
Anybody else interested in this phenomenon?
ETA: There's more about her research in following link:
http://drpennysartori.com/
^ This is a very interesting article by Dr Penny Sartori, a British Intensive Care nurse, and her seven-year clinical study on dying patients and their near death experiences.
And her new book due to be released next month:
The Wisdom of Near Death Experiences: How Understanding NDEs Can Help Us to Live More Fully
I hadn't heard of this lady before reading the above DM article. I'll definitely be buying her book, though, as I have a personal interest in NDEs. My mother had one.
Anybody else interested in this phenomenon?
ETA: There's more about her research in following link:
http://drpennysartori.com/
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I googled the name, and had a look at the sample of the results. The results all seem to refer to a talk given by Ms Sartori in an NDE Conference in March 2013.
Which means that the entire experience as described above took place over a period of less than three and a half years. Which is a little hard to believe, I'm afraid.
I wonder whether it ever occurred to her to paint numbers on the tops of cupboards, and asked those whose spirits floated to the ceiling what the numbers were.
Main problem I have with ICU's is that they so often rely on the testimony of someone off their tits on whatever the doctors gave them, hardly a reliable sample
I'm not sure what you mean by this?
If you read into Sartori's article in the DM, she tells us that some of the patients weren't on any drugs at all during their NDE. In fact, she seems to believe that giving patients drugs could actually be preventing people from having the experiences:
Sartori: Are NDEs merely hallucinations caused by drugs? Clearly not — as 20 per cent of the patients in my sample, including Tom Kennard, had received no drugs at all.
Indeed, when I analysed my research, I found that pain-killing and sedative drugs, particularly at high levels, seem to make it less likely that a patient will have an NDE.
In other words, well-meaning doctors who over-sedate dying patients may be denying them a natural and comforting final vision.
She has also heard from people who have had experiences whilst pumped full of drugs:
Furthermore, I also interviewed 12 patients who’d had drug-induced hallucinations. These were random and often frightening — such as being chased and stabbed with needles by drug dealers — but they bore absolutely no relation to NDEs.
All fascinating stuff.
There are far too many variables to rely have a full study on it. There seems to be no way to prove NEDs are in fact what they claim and not just the result of something else and it seems impossible to establish cause and effect. Makes good anecdotal reading I give you that
Fascinating it may be, but I think "well-meaning doctors who over-sedate dying patients may be denying them a natural and comforting final vision" is the first step down a potentially very unpleasant road. Because what they may also be "denying" them is a lot of pain.
Utter garbage I'm afraid >:(
Regardless, if these experiences, or knowledge of these experiences encourages people to live more fulfilled lives, then surely it's all good. It's not like anyone is gaining by encouraging you to believe in NDEs.
Well yes, perhaps 'denying' wasn't the right word to use there; but I'm sure the nurse involved didn't mean it in that way, seeing as she is/was an intensive care nurse for many years.
Also, it seems that patients still have the right to refuse drugs that doctors prescribe for them, however ill they may be. Not that that means they'll go on to have a NDE, of course.
You're very welcome.
Thanks for your comment too, but why the angry smiley?
I hope that this does not lead to some people purposely ending their lives in pain in the hope that they have some kind of experience. I know it is their choice, but I think it is wrong for her to have published/said this because of the lack of proof and the harm it could cause.
Angry that this woman is trying to make money out of her position by peddling such stuff
I don't think the nurse was implying that approach either.
However, I'm always minded to think that in a universe of quantum physics, dark matter and hyperdimensions, where enough people have experienced a similar thing, then there might well be something to it.
Such stuff? These are people's experiences we are talking about.
Perhaps she personally wasn't, but considering how easily one could misread such a statement it is quite irresponsible.
Assuming you mean the part you emboldened, perhaps you could tell me which part you didn't understand.
They actually cover that in the article and say that they measured blood oxygen levels in people who'd experienced them and the levels were as normal.
Their brains are going through anoxia - a state that is readily shown to cause sensory disturbances and hallucinations.
I suspect the nurse in question is well aware of this, but has still chosen to make a few quid perpetuating the NDE nonsense.
Very cynical
Do you feel the same way about Dr Susan Blackmore?
All of the emboldened bit.
Oh yes! What a wonderfully selective link you provided. How about this quote from her...
"It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena - only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic"
BIB: Isn't it just a selective link? I had no idea she'd been on all that trippy stuff and into ouija boards.
But what has happened to her?* All of her 'official' sites are no longer available. She was once seen as a leading psychologist in NDE research. She even sold books on the subject (making more than a "few quid" to borrow your term) and asked for people's experiences to include in her books - my mother included. I still have a letter that Blackmore wrote to my mother.
Hmmmmm.
List of her books:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1/279-0601543-7761023?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Susan%20J.%20Blackmore&search-alias=books-uk&sort=relevancerank
ETA: *I see by your wiki link that she now has CFS.