GP endorses contentious death care

THE CONTROVERSIAL method of withholding food and drink from terminally ill people to quicken death has “transformed” end-of-life care, a Scottish GP claims.

The Liverpool Care Pathway enables people to have a “pain-free, dignified death” at home, Glasgow-based Dr Des Spence told a leading medical journal.

The method, which can include removing treatment in a patient’s final days, has come under fire from some health experts and campaigners, who say doctors are establishing “death lists” of patients to put on the pathway.

It has also emerged some hospitals in England are being given extra funding to increase the number of patients put on the pathway.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr Spence said: “Used properly, with senior supervision, the pathway offers structure to a peaceful, pain-free, dignified death at home. We talk about death in an open way and decide where patients die.”

MSP Margo MacDonald, campaigner for patients to determine their right to die, said she would prefer patients or their families to decide when someone should die, rather than doctors who currently decide when to put someone on the pathway.