Hospitals may be depriving elderly patients of food and drink to hasten their
deaths as part of cost-cutting measures to free up bed space, leading
doctors warn.
Supporters of the Liverpool Care
Pathway, which allows medical staff to withhold fluid and drugs in a
patient's final days, claim it is the kindest way of letting them slip
away Photo: ALAMY
Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses are placed on a “death
pathway” to help end their lives every year. However, in
a letter to The Daily Telegraph, six doctors warn that hospitals may
be using the controversial scheme to reduce strain on hospital resources.
Supporters of the Liverpool Care Pathway, which allows medical staff to
withhold fluid and drugs in a patient’s final days, claim it is the kindest
way of letting them slip away. But the experts say in their letter that
natural deaths are often freer of pain and distress.
Informed consent is not always being sought by doctors, who fail to ask
patients about their wishes while they are still in control of their
faculties, warn the six. This has led to an increase in patients carrying
cards informing doctors that they do not wish to be put on the pathway in
the last few days of their lives.
The six doctors are experts in elderly care and wrote the letter in
conjunction with the Medical Ethics Alliance, a Christian medical
organisation. They say that many members of the public have contacted them
with examples of inappropriate use of the pathway, which is implemented in
up to 29 per cent of hospital deaths.
They warn that there is no “scientific way of diagnosing imminent death.” They
write: “It is essentially a prediction, and it is possible that other
considerations may come into reaching such a decision, not excluding the
availability of resources.”
