Marie Curie claim to be 'devoted to life' yet they helped develop the 'Liverpool Care Pathway' devoted to death.
Marie Curie claim to be ‘devoted to life’ yet they helped develop the ‘Liverpool Care Pathway’ devoted to death.

The much-criticised Liverpool Care Pathway looks to have  come to the end of the road.

An independent committee has recommended its closure in a report to the Government published today.

The government has ordered hospitals to carry out immediate reviews of their practices and announced that the Liverpool Care Pathway will be phased out.

Developed by Royal Liverpool University Hospital and the Marie Curie cancer charity, the Liverpool Care pathway involves the withdrawal of medication, food and fluids.  Patients are sedated, starved and dehydrated to death.

Its defenders say the LCP offers people a peaceful, pain-free death.  But it is only pain-free because of the sedation.  Dehydration and starvation are normally painful.

The critics accuse doctors of using the LCP to hasten death and free up beds.  Although the Pathway was supposed to be used only in cases where recovery was not possible, elderly patients suffering from non-terminal illnesses have found themselves at risk from doctors illegally practising euthanasia.

NHS Trusts receive payouts for hitting targets related to its use.   Needless to say, the Department of Health vigorously denied suggestions that the Pathway has been used for cynical or economic reasons, but ministers have now accepted it is to go.

Christian Voice has been highlighting the Liverpool Care Pathway, and Marie Curie’s involvement with it, even since it was developed in the late 1990s.

Reports have suggested that doctors have been establishing “death lists” of patients to be put on the pathway. There have also been suggestions that hospitals might be employing the method to cut costs and save bed spaces.  Reacting to the news, one doctor immediately said his NHS Trusts will need more money if the Pathway is phased out.

MP Fiona Bruce told how she saved her father from the LCP after her mother endured an agonising death under it.

Elderly patients simply needing antibiotic treatment for pneumonia or recovering from cancer have been put on the LCP.  Many relatives have said they were never consulted before the procedure was started.  Others have said that to call it a ‘care’ pathway was wrong when its only possible outcome would be the death of the patient, usually in less than two weeks.

One son said that the treatment of his parents, 89 and 90, was ‘grotesque’ and claimed that his parents were put on the pathway to death without consultation.  He expressed surprise and horror, as most people would, that ‘they were given sedatives and had vital food and fluids withdrawn’, which is the defining characteristic of the LCP.

The review, under the chairmanship of Julia Baroness Neuberger, said the controversial end-of-life care regime was used “as an excuse for poor-quality care” and found that while the LCP can offer “high-quality and compassionate care”, there were “too many cases” where it was “incorrectly implemented”.  The review concluded that the regime should be phased out over the next six to twelve months and be replaced with a personalised end-of-life care plan for each individual patient.

The relatives of elderly patients will have to be vigilant lest a new regime repeats the brutality of the old.

 

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24 COMMENTS

  1. Well I do not know where I have been all these years, I had no idea at all that those people that were so very very ill that were taken into Hospital, were there to be murdered. Yes! that is what it is, or perhaps WAS-murder.. When anyone deliberately takes a life or prevents from trying to make a person better, refusing them food or liquid and so takes away LIFE no matter how it is done or has been done, there is indeed only that one word for it. I worked on a dead young man knowing he was dead but continued until an ambulance came. So many times as a first aider worked on people that have either fainted or had an accident, but I never, never thought for one moment no matter how ill people were food and drink would be denied them, or q1

    • ‘Euthanasia’ literally means ‘good death’ and we should all like one of those. But leaving aside the theological challenges, that only God is the author of life, you have spelled out the practical problems – which lie in your two big ‘Ifs’. ‘Done Properly’. And ‘The End Really Is Coming’.

      Actually, ‘Done Properly’ in the case of the LCP meant arranging the patient’s death as quickly as possible, with little regard (apart from sedatives) to the suffering caused by dehydration and starvation. And for too many of the patients the end really wasn’t and (as LCP is continuing for now) isn’t coming at all.

      You will never devise a system which will deliver what you want, because the evidence shows you can’t trust the doctors – and there are even dodgy relatives who just want the money.

      • Doctors take the Hippocratic oath, which doesn’t just mean “to do no harm” as mistakenly thought by so many, but actually means to practice medicine with honesty and integrity.

        You’re not seriously suggesting that a doctor would end a persons life for any other reason that it would alleviate suffering and bring relief from prolonged pain; and that even then the doctor in question wouldn’t have given due consideration to quality of life offered by other options?

        What are your views on assisted suicide (that is euthanasia requested by the patient) or are you patronising enough to suggest to a seriously ill person with near zero quality of life, that they should “hang on in there” because of some belief system based on fairy stories, that doesn’t even necessarily apply to them.

        This is an extremely serious topic worthy of serious debate and not some half baked inconsequential belief on the part of a minority like yourself.

        You guys are seriously hurt if that is truly what you believe.

  4. By “done properly” I meant according to the original concept of the Liverpool Care Pathway, as used in properly run hospices. I don’t suppose Christian Voice would want to close these hospices, some of which are run by nuns. By “when the end was really coming”, I meant when I was very frail and old and had a terminal illness. In fact, relatives (dodgy or otherwise) don’t seem to have been consulted, which is actually one of the complaints.

    Anyway, it is up to me whether I welcome it, not up to Stephen Green. Even Robin with his Aristotelian logic would not be able to prove that I personally would not welcome it.

    The actual details of how this route to death is administered are determined by the laws preventing more obvious and possibly preferable euthanasia in this country, except for animals.

      • Which would be whom ? You’ve just dismissed every doctor as being untrustworthy and non medical people don’t have the knowledge to give the correct medical care. What would you suggest as an alternative ? Leaving people to die in pain ?

          • So you don’t agree with the LCP, yet you can’t propose a suitable alternative. OK then.

          • Since you don’t know the clinical practices of every member of the NHS, you’re not in a position to make sweeping statements about whether they do or do not respect human life. What actually is needed is a mass boost in staffing levels in the NHS, so that clinical staff actually have time to care for patients and less focus on the link between targets and financial gain.

          • The accusation is made that doctors are under financial pressure to get rid of the elderly to free up beds. More staff would mean more expenditure and more pressure to cut costs in that way among many.

    • People who respect human life and who would pray with these people, either for a complete recovery or to prepare them for the afterlife that we shall ALL have to face. Ie repentance for past sins and cleansing by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
      No-one wants to see people suffering, least of all I. But equally neither do I want the law to be changed, or for this LCP to continue. This whole episode smacks of Hitler’s final solution.

      • There might be people who are dying who don’t believe in cleansing by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and who would be very distressed by this approach. It hardly seems fair to force it on them in a Christian institution when they are dying if they have resisted it all their lives up until then. I don’t call that respect for human beings.

  6. I had experience of the LCP last year when my wife had a serious stroke. I was told that she would deteriorate over the next few days and that they would not resuscitate in an emergency.
    When she was showing a slight improvement a week later, I was told that they had held a conference and decided that if she didn’t make better progress they would have to stop food.
    I told them I wouldn’t accept stopping treatment under any circumstances, and they began to feed her through a nasal tube. After 24 hours, a nurse came in and told me that she had got to remove the tube because it wasn’t in the right place. I thought that sounded strange because they should make sure it’s in the right position before the begin the process, meanwhile my wife was still unconscious. For another 10 days they messed around with the feeding tube claiming they couldn’t get it in the correct position, while the Consultants expressed concern that she wasn’t waking up. Eventually I told the doctors that I wasn’t having a conference deciding whether my wife lived or died and if they had a conspiracy to starve her to death I would raise hell with the authorities. Within the hour they had the tube in position and were feeding her. I later discovered that they were also sedating her which was the reason she wasn’t waking up.