By Simon Caldwell
MANCHESTER (CNS) – The British government has opened an independent inquiry into allegations an end-of-life protocol is operating as a euthanasia pathway.
The inquiry will investigate complaints of families who say relatives have died after being placed, without their knowledge, on the Liverpool Care Pathway.
The framework, intended for people in final hours of life, often involves sedation and withdrawal of life-prolonging treatment which, under British law, includes food and fluids.
Critics say it is being used to hasten the deaths of terminally ill and elderly patients who are not imminently dying.
Norman Lamb, Care and Support Minister, said in a November 26 statement that the inquiry would also review how cash incentives, paid to state-funded National Health Service hospital trusts to hit targets on the percentages of patient deaths on the pathway – might have led to “bad decisions or practice”.
“It is vitally important everyone can be confident in the findings of this work and that we learn lessons where they are needed so we can ensure end-of-life care is as good as it can be,” said Lamb.
A November 27 statement by the Catholic Communications Network said Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark welcomed the review.
It said he had passed on “specific concerns raised with him by some clinicians” and had called for such an inquiry in a September 27 letter to the government.
Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury also issued a November 27 statement praising the intervention of Fiona Bruce, the member of Parliament for Congleton, within his diocese.
Bruce had pressed the government to open the inquiry following her experience of one of her parents dying on the pathway.
Bishop Davies added: “All of us need to have confidence that medical and nursing practice is upholding in our hospitals the value and dignity of human life until the moment of natural death.” – CNS