In a report published 4 years ago a Top Doctor made a chilling
claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year
1.
Professor says
doctors use 'death pathway' to euthanasia of the elderly
2.
Around 29 per cent
of patients that die in hospital are on controversial 'care pathway'
3.
Pensioner admitted
to hospital given treatment by doctor on weekend shift
However, despite The Liverpool Care Pathway being phased out from 2013 it appears many hospitals still use this now discredited pathway, the LCP was widely abused as a 'tick box exercise', with patients being casually assessed as terminal, heavily sedated, and denied water so the diagnosis became self-fulfilling.
Distressing: The professor has claimed an approved technique of looking after the terminally ill is not being used in all hospitals |
NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of
elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up
beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.
Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a
controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.
He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the
Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that
is used in hospitals across the country.
It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible
for a patient to recover and death is imminent.
There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are
in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients
who were on the LCP.
Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who
could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted
death pathway rather than a care pathway’.
He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or
difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors.
Worrying claim: Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial 'death pathway' into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly |
Professor Pullicino revealed he had personally intervened to take a
patient off the LCP who went on to be successfully treated.
He said this showed that claims they had hours or days left are
‘palpably false’. In the example he revealed a 71-year-old who was
admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia and epilepsy was put on the LCP
by a covering doctor on a weekend shift.
Professor Pullicino said he had returned to work after a weekend to find
the patient unresponsive and his family upset because they had not agreed to
place him on the LCP.
‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance,’ he
said.
‘His seizures came under control and four weeks later he was discharged
home to his family,’ he said.
Professor Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals
and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, was speaking
to the Royal Society of Medicine in London.
He said: ‘The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway
makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway.
‘Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer
are being killed by the LCP.
‘Patients are frequently put on the pathway without a proper analysis of
their condition.
‘Predicting death in a time frame of three to four days, or even at any
other specific time, is not possible scientifically.
This determination in the LCP leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The
personal views of the physician or other medical team members of perceived
quality of life or low likelihood of a good outcome are probably central in
putting a patient on the LCP.’
He added: ‘If we accept the Liverpool Care Pathway we accept that
euthanasia is part of the standard way of dying as it is now associated with 29
per cent of NHS deaths.’
The LCP was developed in the North West during the 1990s and recommended
to hospitals by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in
2004.
Medical criticisms of the Liverpool Care Pathway were voiced nearly
three years ago.
Experts including Peter Millard, emeritus professor of geriatrics at the
University of London, and Dr Peter Hargreaves, palliative care consultant at St
Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, Surrey, warned of ‘backdoor euthanasia’ and
the risk that economic factors were being brought into the treatment of
vulnerable patients.
In the example of the 71-year-old, Professor Pullicino revealed he had
given the patient another 14 months of life by demanding the man be removed
from the LCP.
Professor Pullicino said the patient was an Italian who spoke poor
English, but was living with a ‘supportive wife and daughter’. He had a history
of cerebral haemorrhage and subsequent seizures.
Professor Pullicino said: ‘I found him deeply unresponsive on a Monday
morning and was told he had been put on the LCP. He was on morphine via a
syringe driver.’ He added: ‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite
significant resistance.’
The patient’s extra 14 months of life came at considerable cost to the
NHS and the taxpayer, Professor Pullicino indicated.
He said he needed extensive support with wheelchair, ramps and nursing.
After 14 months the patient was admitted to a different hospital with
pneumonia and put on the LCP. The man died five hours later.
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘The Liverpool Care Pathway is
not euthanasia and we do not recognise these figures. The pathway is
recommended by NICE and has overwhelming support from clinicians – at home and
abroad – including the Royal College of Physicians.
‘A patient’s condition is monitored at least every four hours and, if a
patient improves, they are taken off the Liverpool Care Pathway and given
whatever treatments best suit their new needs.’
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