NICE produces new draft guidelines on caring for the dying

"England's health watchdog has put forward new draft guidance to improve the care of adults in their last few days of life," BBC News reports. The guidelines, produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), have been proposed as an alternative to the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway, which was phased out in 2014.   What was the Liverpool Care Pathway? The Liverpool Care Pathway was developed during the late 1990s at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, in conjunction with the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute. It was intended to provide the best quality of care possible for dying patients in the last days and hours of life, whether they were in hospital, at home, in a care home or in a hospice. It was designed to address concerns such as: patients being subjected to invasive testing and treatment that offered no chance of preventing death causing unnecessary pain and suffering by needlessly prolonging life   Why did it become controversial? There were three main issues of controversy that were widely reported in the media: the assessment that a person was dying was not always made by an experienced clinician and was not reliably reviewed the dying person may have been unduly sedated as a result of poor prescribing methods there were claims that hydration and some essential medicines may have been withheld, which may have a negative impact on the dying process It appeared that while the Pathway its...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: QA articles Source Type: news