• Fiona Bruce said treatment was withdrawn from father without consultation
  • 83-year-old was moved into nursing home where he is now thriving
  • Spoke out during Parliamentary debate on the controversial pathway
  • Senior doctors conceded that LCP has become a 'euphemism for death'

By Daniel Martin and Jenny Hope

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Not consulted: Fiona Bruce said she was told 'almost casually' by a nurse that life-saving treatment had been removed from her 83-year-old father

Not consulted: Fiona Bruce said she was told 'almost casually' by a nurse that life-saving treatment had been removed from her 83-year-old father

An MP told movingly yesterday how she saved her father from the Liverpool Care Pathway, two years after her mother endured an 'agonising' death on the system.

Fiona Bruce said she was told 'almost casually' by a nurse that doctors had decided to remove life-saving treatment from her 83-year-old father, despite not having consulted relatives.

She moved him into a nursing home where, six months on, he is thriving.

Her mother died after she was placed on the controversial system following a brain tumour operation.

Mrs Bruce spoke out during a Parliamentary debate on the pathway, in which MP after MP criticised the way it is being implemented in hospitals.

In a separate development, senior doctors conceded the LCP has become a 'euphemism for death', with families 'frightened' about their relatives going on it.

Dr Bee Wee, president of the Association for Palliative Medicine, said the checklist for LCP patients was sometimes used unthinkingly by staff.

'We know that training deficiencies exist,' she said. 'If people are getting bad care, we need to get to the bottom of it.'

In the Commons debate, one MP claimed patients were being killed with 'machine-like efficiency' with fewer than 5 per cent of patients placed on the LCP ever taken off it.

Another said failure to inform a family that a patient was being put on the scheme was tantamount to 'murder' and that doctors who did so should 'face the legal consequences'.

Care Services Minister Norman Lamb, who following a Daily Mail campaign ordered an independent inquiry into the pathway which will report by the summer, said he had been 'personally horrified' by accounts of food and drink being inappropriately withdrawn.

Concern: Care Services Minister Norman Lamb ordered an independent inquiry into the pathway which will report by the summer. He said he had been personally horrified by accounts of food and drink being inappropriately withdrawn

Concern: Care Services Minister Norman Lamb ordered an independent inquiry into the pathway which will report by the summer. He said he had been 'personally horrified' by accounts of food and drink being inappropriately withdrawn

It was 'non-negotiable' that relatives should always be consulted, he said.

Every year, 130,000 people die on the pathway, under which doctors remove life-saving treatment. In December it emerged that almost half are never told that treatment is being removed.

Mrs Bruce, vice chairman of the parliamentary Dying Well group, said that in her mother's case 'it took her weeks to pass away, which was agonising for her, and heart-rending for her family. There was no discussion, no consultation with the daughter.'

Last summer, her father was taken to hospital feeling unwell, she told MPs. Doctors could not diagnose any illness, although he was very frail. After a few days, Mrs Bruce asked a nurse how he was doing.

The MP for Congleton recalled: '"Oh," said the nurse, almost casually, "he's not very well at all. He has not long to live; we're putting him on the Liverpool Care Pathway." No discussion, no explanation, no consultation; just an announcement. Surely there should be more formality about this, more dignity.'

A day later, he was moved to a nursing home. 'There, his needs were attended to in a positive and caring way,' Mrs Bruce said. 'There he didn't die. In fact, he got better. Now, well over six months later, that elderly man is very much alive, still being cared for: eating well, enjoying visits from his family. It's not a fantastic quality of life – but it is a life.'


The comments below have been moderated in advance.

The Public need to understand that overwhelmingly patients who are placed on the LCP are so because death is imminent and it would be cruel to prolong suffering any further by inserting NG feed and IV fluids and actively trying to resuscitate them following cardiac arrest. This is a brutal intervention in a already very frail and dying patient. Often in my experience as a dedicated nurse of 10 years the LCP has proven to be the kindest and most humane way of caring for the dying.

Let the one who thought up the LCP; to reduce the financial burden on the country that when it comes to that time on his death bed and that when he craves but for a damp sponge for his thirsty parched lips that he should only too have it denied and then o die of hunger and thirst.

Any way to save money and the government will use it even if it means baxk door euthenasia. Then they have the nerve to try and justify what is basically murder.

Any "doctor" who unilaterally and with no record of previous agreement by patient or family puts anyone on this "pathway" should be arrested for murder if the patient subsequenlty dies of dehydration or starvation, as they inevitably will.

So, when will we read of the first prosecutions of individual doctors for putting people on the LCP without permission? How many old people have been unnecessarily murdered because of lack of proper care in our hospitals? It's a real scandal yet to be fully exposed.

It is a very strange situation when people have neither the right to die or the right to live! I do not agree with euthanasia but they will fight to keep these people alive and sentence to death others who really want to live.

This is horrifying. It is unbelievable. I don't know what world I am living in anymore.

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