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Doctors must follow wishes of terminally-ill patients
Sophie Goodchild6 Mar 2009
Doctors who ignore the dying wishes of terminally ill patients could face being struck off.
New guidelines for medical staff say doctors should discuss all options with patients and relatives over "end of life" care. This means terminally ill patients will have more choice in how they are treated.
Experts today said the guidance from the General Medical Council will reignite the "right to die" debate.
This follows a number of high-profile cases where British doctors have been struck off for helping terminally ill patients to die.
The GMC advice will be published this month and applies to 150,000 practising doctors. It covers all life-threatening conditions including brain damage.
End of life care includes refusing treatment for terminally ill patients and turning off life supports.
The document does not cover assisted suicide or actively helping a patient to die but it does raise issues about the right of patients to refuse treatment.
The GMC said it expected doctors to take all "reasonable steps" to consider a patient's wishes in delicate cases. This includes withdrawing life support for patients unlikely to recover.
Jane O'Brien, the GMC's assistant director of standards and ethics, said: "Clinicians still have the final say on 'best interests' but we are asking them to give greater weight to patients' wishes in a more formal sense than we have before."
Doctors' leaders today said they would back the new guidance and that end of life care was "a grey area".
Dr Laurence Buckman, from the British Medical Association, said most doctors respected patients' wishes and would never deliberately prolong a life beyond hope.
Dr Buckman, chairman of the BMA GPs' committee, said: "We would never go along with the wish of passive euthanasia and deliberately agreeing to kill a patient is murder. But there are grey areas and this is also a debate that society needs to have."
Actively helping someone to kill themselves is a crime. But patients with terminal diseases have been helped to die at Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas.GP Michael Irwin was struck off four years ago by the GMC after he helped a sick friend to die.
Mr Irwin said today: "There is sometimes too much emphasis on keeping people alive at all costs when with a bit more experience you could make their final days more comfortable in line with their wishes."
Reader views (7)
doctors are held responsible to the society by virtue of their profession,they are also guided by their ethical code. nowhere in this ethical code grants doctors to become gods or demigods to decide which of their patients should live or die.i strongly believe that if we grant this power to medical practitioners, then there be an slippery slope, to which there is no end. so i am in total agreement with Janell Mckinley
- Carey smith, New york,America, 31/10/2011 01:17
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I am a student at Shortwood Teacher college and currently doing a course called ethics, where i came aross euthanasia. i am in total disagreement with the concept of euthanasia. why would you want to kill someone that you are suppose to be helping?, better yet why would you want to play the role of god,by taking someones life. anyway, doctors are appointed to save lives not end them. Mr. Herbert Henry i totally agree with you
- janell mckinley, Kingston, Jamaica, 30/10/2011 21:18
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I am a student at Shortwood Teacher college and currently doing a course called ethics, where i came aross euthanasia. i am in total disagreement with the concept of euthanasia. why would you want to kill someone that you are suppose to be helping?, better yet why would you want to play the role of god,by taking someones life. anyway, doctors are appointed to save lives not end them. Mr. Herbert Henry i totally agree with you
- janell mckinley, Kingston, Jamaica, 30/10/2011 21:17
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is this act morally right? Why help kill someone and you know not how they placed on earth.I agree with Herbert Henry that if were sent to medical school to help enhance the human's life why should we be the one to decide to end it? Check the Christian Bible and also the christian view of life and death.
- Christine Shaw, Kingston,jamaica, 18/03/2009 14:00
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I'm all in favour of assisted euthanasia. I could also never see why suicide was made a criminal offence. A person's body belongs to them and to them alone; that's the basis of the civil action of assault as well as the crime of rape. On a wider view, it's also the basis for legalizing prostitution. Why should prostitution be a crime? Who is it hurting? The only exception I'd make for euthanasia, suicide and prostitution being other than a decision for the person involved is that the statutory age should come in. Only people over a certain age (16, 18, 21?) should be allowed to make such decisions, on the basis that only then do they have enough life experience to make the judgment. Beyond that, it should be totally up the person involved to make a decision for themself on euthanasia, suicide, prostitution and any similar matter that involves their own body.
- Phil Jones, London UK, 08/03/2009 12:48
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Herbert - Powerful pain relief drugs may shorten a patient's life, especially if the patient chooses to take a higher dose than is medically recommended. It's his life, his pain, and surely his right to decide? Especially since he's terminally ill, meaning that he will soon die of the illness and that no medic can do anything to change that.
Withholding pain relief when there is nothing else to offer, is in my mind akin to torture.
- Nigel, London, 06/03/2009 18:12
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The purpose of a medical degree is to save human life as much as possible.
If we are to assist patients to die, why "kill" ourselves to study this art?
- Herbert Henry, kingston, Jamaica, 06/03/2009 12:36
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