When end of life care goes wrong

In 2014, following public outcry over the staggering number of untimely and distressing deaths caused by the now infamous Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), the protocol was scrapped. In 2015, the UK regulatory body National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) replaced the LCP’s one-size-fits-all, blanket approach with a set of individualised recommendations, based on the best available research evidence. However, in many hospitals, hospices, care homes, and for patients receiving home-based end of life care, those recommendations are being ignored, with the result that vulnerable patients are still being subjected to premature and unnecessary death.

In response to a growing number of complaints received by Voice for Justice UK (VfJUK) from bereaved relatives, The Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group (LCFCPG) commissioned an investigation into end of life care in Britain today. The findings were horrifying. From over 600 complaints (the tip of an iceberg), 17 case studies, that fulfilled the rigorous medical and legal requirements felt to be necessary, were selected for inclusion into our Report, When End of Life Care Goes Wrong.

Lynda Rose, Anglican priest, former barrister, and convenor of the LCFCPG, said “Our Report shows all too clearly that misdiagnoses and mis-assessments as to quality of life and proximity to dying are disturbingly common. Excessive and inappropriate use of Midazolam and Morphine, rendering a patient comatose, coupled with the withdrawal of food and hydration, have combined to impose a death sentence on the elderly and vulnerable from which there is no right of appeal. Life matters, and every last moment of life matters for those bound together by love. We shall all one day have to cross that final bar – so for all our sakes, we need to end the abuse now and ensure that the vulnerable – whose voices are so often ignored – are respected and that they receive the best possible care society can offer.”

Read here

Sign petition: “Managed death”. Stop end of life abuse!

Watch: Lynda Rose and Robert Harris discuss the issue on Politics Today, Revelation TV