Leading Palliative Care Doctor spells out the consequences of using doctors to end the lives of patients by giving them lethal drugs. Care and kill can never be used as synonyms

Oct 16, 2020 | News

Writing in today’s Times Dr Carol L Davis, Lead consultant palliative medicine, University Hospital Southampton, spells out the consequences of  using doctors to end the lives of patients by giving them lethal drugs.  Care and kill can never be used as synonyms.

Sir, Norma Rinsler (letter, Oct 14) talks of a “reluctance” on the part of many doctors, especially those of us who care day in and day out for terminally ill patients, to prescribe lethal drugs.

We are not reluctant, we are just not prepared to do it.

She also asks: “Where is the patient in all this?”

Good clinical care is a partnership between patient and doctor. Doctors cannot insist on patients having treatment: the patient has a right to refuse. Equally a patient cannot demand a specific treatment. Doctor-patient dialogue isn’t just another customer-supplier relationship.

Contrary to what Professor Rinsler suggests most patients do “let go quietly”, dying peacefully of their illness.

Their doctors know they have a duty of care to provide effective symptom control and care as life ends. But that’s a completely different matter from giving dying patients lethal drugs.

Dr Carol L Davis

Lead consultant palliative medicine, University Hospital Southampton

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