A DEVOTED daughter who fought for the right to save her father’s life all the way to the Court of Protection says she feels she let him down after he passed away earlier this month.

Stella Edwards battled during her father’s final weeks to overturn a do not resuscitate order (DNR) placed on her father Samuel’s file. Contesting the Great Western Hospital doctors’ decision saw the matter taken to court in London where she fought for her father to receive cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) if needed.

The case was heard by a High Court judge who despite impassioned pleas from Stella ruled that CPR would be "positively harmful."

The court heard that 83-year-old Mr Edwards was suffering from health problems associated with the terminal phase of his dementia, including pneumonia, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cerebrovascular disease that had led to strokes.

Stella, 43, was granted lasting power of attorney in 2011 when her father’s health began to deteriorate and she opposed the DNR on her father’s file. Having lost her mother to a heart attack she said it had been her father’s wish to receive CPR if he required it, as his wife had.

Following her father’s death at the hospital on July 8 she said she didn’t want any other families to go through the same thing.

“You hit the ground running when you start looking after someone as their carer,” said Stella, who had looked after him for nine years. “My dad was my specialist subject.

“I feel bad that he has gone before his time and the way it has all happened.

“I want people to understand that you might have a lasting power of attorney but it is not worth the paper it is written on, because the court overturned it.

“I didn’t know how long my dad had. He might still be alive if he didn’t have a DNR placed on him by the Court of Protection. I was not being cruel, I just wanted my dad to live his last days in a natural way, as he would have wanted.

“ I feel we need to have corporate manslaughter in this country.”

Stella’s demands to remove the DNR comes after a national audit of dying patients highlighted earlier this year that up to 40,000 patients a year across the country were having the orders imposed on them without their families being made aware.

“I am not someone who is trying to avoid death for my father and have him live forever, " said Stella. "I just wanted to make sure that he had what he wanted in his wishes in his lasting power of attorney. He gave me permission to speak on his behalf, and they took that away from us.”

Nerissa Vaughan, chief executive of GWH, said: “Our highly experienced medical and nursing teams often have the unenviable task of making difficult decisions to ensure that patients nearing the end of their lives have a comfortable and dignified death, without unnecessary pain or harm.

“Losing a loved one is always difficult and we offer Ms Edwards and her family our full support and deepest sympathies at this upsetting time.”

Mr Edward’s funeral will be held at the New Apostolic Church on Walsingham Road in Walcot on Monday August 1.