July 2013 – For some time I have been concerned that the LCP was being used inappropriately. I am afraid I do have an issue with a strategy which I understand was developed for people in hospices dying of cancer, being used on the general population. First of all, unless you are God you have no right to assume someone is dying. I do understand that the LCP has helped people with cancer where the knowledge and experience base is very specialised and to me its use could be appropriate as a decision made by the patient with the full knowledge of next of kin and medical team led by a senior specialist according to best interests principals with recourse to law where there is a disagreement.
For anyone else who could be in hospital for a multitude of reasons the ethical role of the medical profession I believe should be the preservation of life, not the destroying of life. I do realise that there may be pain issues and I defer to the experts in how best to manage this but I am afraid killing people off is something which I thought was a criminal offence.
I heard about someone the other day who woke up in the morgue just before organ harvesting (what a disgraceful term), was about to start. Death is unpredictable and the process should always assume that an individual is worth saving and err on the side of caution not inevitability.
This brings me to my next point and why I am posting this here. My wife and son have a range of disabilities and every single day I wonder and worry that some day, if they got really sick some junior doctor, tired and overworked, could make a decision that their life isn’t worth saving because they are disabled. Worse still is the thought that someone could link disability and organ donation and determine that they were worthless in life but at least we can harvest their organs after death to help someone normal who deserves life more. This is really why the LCP has worried me as it gave doctors a legitimate excuse to kill.
In case you think I hate the NHS nothing could be further from the truth. I think the NHS is a wonderful thing and most doctors, nurses and support staff do a wonderful job. However there must never be any occasion where there could be a conflict of interest between a patient’s best interests and the hospital’s best interests and I feel this line was crossed a long time ago for possible reasons of saving money, reducing bed blocking or to meet targets.
Whatever they bring in to replace the LCP I hope that it will be used exceptionally rather than routinely, that it will be carried out with the full agreement of the patient and relatives and that it is overseen and endorsed by a no one less than senior consultant, I would prefer a judge to both satisfy due process and protect the medical profession from malpractice litigation.
If Nelson Mandela had been just an ordinary man getting his treatment here I can’t help but wonder if he might have been put on the LCP and been dead and buried weeks ago.
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