The most painful death I witnessed, however, was that of my beloved father. He died in an NHS hospital—not from illness alone, but through a process of starvation and dehydration, legally sanctioned under what was called the 'Liverpool Care Pathway.
The Liverpool Care Pathway was designed by those in the Hospice Movement with the aim to allow those in hospital to get a similar level of care. I remember the time before it, working on the wards and you wouldn't want a hamster to go through what people did, junior Doctors terrified of prescribing sufficient end of life medications over a weekend because they weren't trained to recognise a dying patient. However, the pathway wasn't implemented with enough training for either nursing or medical staff, the inbuilt safeguards ignored ( regular reviews) and the age old issue of the acute sector getting bored as soon as someone isn't 'fixable'.
As someone who spends a lot of their working life looking after people who are dying, I can see both sides of the argument. I hope the Lords give this Bill their fullest attention. They are going to need to strip away the emotion from a very emotive issue to ensure appropriate legal safeguards are in place.