LONDON — Terminally-ill patients in England are being made to die prematurely because doctors are wrongly judging them as close to death, six medical experts have claimed in a letter to London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.
New guidelines introduced by England’s National Health Service allow doctors and medical staff to withdraw food, fluid and drugs from dying patients and sedate them until they die. Sedation, however, can mask signs that a patient in fact is not dying and, in effect, result in the person being put to death by following the guidelines, which are called the Liverpool Care Pathway.
The guidelines were designed to reduce a patient’s suffering in his or her final hours and have been adopted by more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England since 2004, the Telegraph reported. However, symptoms that might lead a medical team to conclude a patient is dying can be caused by other medical problems, the experts said.
“Forecasting death is an inexact science” and patients can be misdiagnosed as close to death, the letter noted. Withdrawing food, fluids and medicine after an incorrect diagnosis that a patient is close to death results in a “self-fulfilling prophecy” of his or her death, it said. The experts’ warning came on the heels of a report estimating up to 1 million patients had received poor or cruel care in the country’s national health system.
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