British Doctors Advise Patients to Record Their End of Life Care Wishes

British doctors are encouraging dying patients to create a written record of their wishes for end of life care. Namely, doctors are asking patients to record whether or not resuscitation should be administered and an explanation of how the patient would like to be treated during their last days. This legally binding record could then be kept in the new NHS database which is being developed. Once in the database, patients’ wishes would be available to almost all medical practitioners, including hospitals, ambulances, and casualty staffs.

The advice to create this written record is found in the Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Nursing’s first patients’ charter. The charter states that doctors and their medical staffs will “assist you to record your decisions and do our best to ensure that your wishes are fulfilled, wherever possible, by all those who offer you care and support.”

If a patient and their family prepared a written record of their end of life care wishes properly and had the document signed and witnessed, the record could potentially be as legally binding as an advanced directive. Some hospital consultants claim, however, that a written request for no resuscitation carries more weight than a request asking for resuscitation.

A spokesman for the British Department of Health stated:

GPs and nurses have a vital role in providing high quality, compassionate end of life care, and that is why we welcome this End of Life Patient Charter…We are committed to improving the quality of end of life care and we will continue to promote the implementation of the End of Life Care Strategy.

Stephen Adams, Terminally Ill ‘Should Write Down How They Want to Die’ , The Telegraph, May 31, 2011.