Dr Ann McPherson CBE helped to found Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying, and was its first Chair. Ann died on 28 May 2011 from pancreatic cancer.
Vision
Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD) believes that healthcare professionals have a duty of care to their patients, which informs our belief that people should not have to suffer against their wishes at the end of life. Alongside access to good quality end-of-life care and the right to refuse medical treatment, we believe that terminally ill, mentally competent adults should have the choice of an assisted death, subject to legal safeguards
As members of caring professions we do not think that some terminally ill people should be forced through a lack of safeguarded choice to travel abroad to die. Healthcare professionals should be able to openly discuss all appropriate options with their patients at the end of life, and doing so would better protect potentially vulnerable people from abuse
We believe that the law must change and that this should be supported by our professional bodies. Evidence and fact must guide end-of-life decision making, not unsubstantiated fears.
As a practising or retired healthcare professional, you can help bring about much needed change by registering your support for the campaign. We will keep you updated on key developments including relevant events, and opportunities to make your voice heard to decision-makers in the professional bodies and Westminster.
Mission
We support Dignity in Dying's campaign for greater patient choice at the end of life and their policy on assisted dying, and believe that the medical professional bodies, such as the British Medical Association, should not oppose change which puts the wishes of individual patients first.
Specifically we want:
To change medical culture:
We recognise that dying is inevitable and is part of life. For those with terminal conditions, the dying process is not a failure of the heathcare team or the patient – but it does become a failure if the patient suffers an undignified death. Moreover since dying in these circumstances is not a failure, help in dying should be thought of as assisting dying and not assisting suicide.
To change the law:
Healthcare professionals can indirectly hasten death through the withdrawal/withholding of treatment or through the principle of ‘double effect’, but direct and deliberate assistance to die, at the patient’s request, is illegal. The law must change to provide safeguarded greater choice at the end of life, ensuring that within reason the wishes of terminally ill, mentally competent adults are respected.
To change clinical practice:
Assisted dying should be just one of many options at the end of life. It should be available to complement other end-of-life care, as it does in other countries that have legalised and regulated assisted dying. Those wanting an assisted death should be supported by their healthcare professionals to die when and where they choose, within safeguards.
“I’m feeling pretty bloody awful. The nurse and doctor came today to incise the abscess around my chest drain and made the unhelpful suggestion that I might need some antibiotics even though antibiotics make me sick. The GP certainly understands where I am coming from, but when I said that I can’t understand why I have to carry on living like this and why I can’t just die, the nurse said, ‘Well you might change your mind.’ I think it very unlikely I will change my mind, and even if I did I don’t care. It is nice to see people but if I had the choice there is no question that I would prefer to be dead than to see people. Because I feel so ill."
"I know everyone is different. It’s nothing specific: I just feel ill, and there seems to be nothing that can make that better. I feel really furious at this. I think it is cruel. In my practice I saw people who felt like this, and I felt I had let them down. I think my GP thinks that, but all she can do is say she is sorry and squeeze my hand.”