Liverpool Care Pathway

Debate between Glyn Davies and Lilian Greenwood

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Glyn Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Patients on the pathway should be monitored regularly, and if the patient shows signs of rallying, as does happen in a minority of cases, the treatment should be modified to support recovery. If that is not happening, the pathway is not being implemented properly. The Liverpool care pathway is not a pathway to death —a phrase I have seen used often, but which I think is unbelievably awful. It is a travesty of the truth to describe it as a form of euthanasia.

Why have we reached the point of huge public controversy, which has caused so much angst and fear? It has arisen from allegations—serious allegations, some of them from doctors and nurses—that the pattern of end-of-life care I have described has not been followed in some cases. There have been stories of dying patients being deprived of the food and water they needed and others being kept continuously sedated until they died; and of patients being placed on the pathway without consultation with them or their families, or to meet targets. The fear of that is especially shocking, and I hope the Minister will comment specifically on the issue of targets.

Let me look at some of the allegations in more detail. According to the Daily Mail in June last year,

“NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds”.

The report is based on a presentation to the Royal Society of Medicine by Professor Patrick Pullicino, a consultant neurologist. He stated:

“The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway.”

That is the debate being led by the Daily Mail. Professor Pullicino continued:

“Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP.”

Imagine how a frail elderly person entering hospital a few weeks after reading that would feel. Professor Pullicino added:

“Patients are frequently put on the pathway without a proper analysis of their condition.”

According to the Daily Telegraph, in September, a group of experts stated in a letter that

“dying patients…can…have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.”

The letter—again according to the Daily Telegraph—spoke of a “national crisis” in patient care, and

“a national wave of discontent…building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”

According to the newspaper, some patients were wrongly being put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die. The report continued:

“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway”,

and,

“many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.”

Those are shockingly serious allegations. If they are true, urgent corrective action is needed.

There is another side to the equation, however. More than 20 respected organisations, including the Department of Health, Age UK, the Alzheimer’s Society, Macmillan Cancer Support, and the Royal Colleges of Physicians, General Practitioners and Nursing, have signed a declaration that

“Since the late 1990s, the Liverpool Care Pathway has been helping to spread elements of the hospice model of care into other healthcare settings”.

It mentions:

“Published misconceptions and often inaccurate information”—

referring, I think, to the stories in national newspapers I have quoted. Our task and the Minister’s is to reconcile the support of all those organisations for the Liverpool care pathway with the allegations made—in good faith, I am sure—by people who believe that the pathway is what they call a pathway to death.

Any tool is only as good as the workman who uses it. The declaration states clearly that the Liverpool care pathway

“Relies on staff being trained to have a thorough understanding of how to care for people who are in their last days or hours of life.”

We have to face the fact that, in most professions, there are instances of excellence and malpractice, and health care is no exception. It would be surprising if, when 130,000 people a year are dying on the Liverpool care pathway, there were no cases in which the pathway had been misapplied. That applies to every branch of medicine and, indeed, every occupation. There are good and less good doctors and nurses; there are well run and less well run hospitals; but to lay the blame at the door of the Liverpool care pathway is like tearing up “The Highway Code” because there are some bad drivers. Where there is bad practice and poor care, it should be rooted out and replaced with good care.

It seems to me that the review the Government recently launched provides an excellent opportunity to consider thoroughly all those issues. It is urgently needed. The review should call for any evidence of poor end-of-life care. We need the Minister to assure us this afternoon that the stories I have quoted will not simply be taken at face value, but will be investigated in detail, so that we can establish the scale of poor end-of-life care, and understand the causes and correct them.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I am listening carefully to the important points the hon. Gentleman is making. My constituents John and Mary Roche lost their mother five years ago. They came to see me because, having seen the media reports, they were concerned about her care toward the end of her life—she had been admitted to hospital and subsequently had her food and nutrition withdrawn. Does he think my constituents and others like them should be encouraged to share their stories, so that they can be taken into account in the Government’s review of the Liverpool care pathway and its appropriate use?

[Glyn Davies]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point, because I most certainly do agree. I hope that, as a result of today’s debate, more people will come forward to put their experiences, especially of bad practice, in front of the Minister and the review.

We must not forget that it is necessary not to allow the shortcomings of some end-of-life care providers to undermine the outstanding work that the majority of doctors and nurses perform. It is easy to forget that, for those caring for people in the last days and hours of their life, alarmist stories cause real problems, misleading vulnerable people and their relatives into thinking that the unhappy experiences reported so prominently are typical of end-of-life care as a whole, making them reluctant to accept care that is genuinely beneficial, and generating fear of going into any sort of care setting. My sense is that the high profile given to these serious allegations, unaccompanied by supporting evidence, is analogous to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. We need to know that the Minister will consider all the allegations that are made, including those that have been reported, look at the evidence, and institute whatever changes are needed to ensure safety and thereby confidence in the integrity of the Liverpool care pathway.

I end with a general observation. I was appalled, as I am sure everyone in the Chamber was, by the recent revelations of poor care in a Worcestershire hospital, in Winterbourne View and in Stafford hospital. I was moved, as many of us will have been, by the observations made in the main Chamber before the Christmas recess by the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) regarding the inadequate and cruel care given to her late husband. We are reading about too many such cases. Considerable advances have been made in medical science, but we must ensure that, at the same time, we do not lose commitment in the NHS to basic care. I cannot help wondering whether the examples of poor end-of-life care that some relatives believe was given to their loved ones stem from the wider malaise of forgetting how to care for the sick, rather than from any specific clinical protocols such as the Liverpool care pathway.