End of Life Guidance
24 June 2010
Doctors are to receive new guidance to help them make complex decisions at the end of life.
In publishing the new guidance, the General Medical Council seeks to improve end-of-life treatment and care for all patients. The guidance was developed over a two year period and involved an extensive consultation with doctors, patients and their carers, family members, health care teams and other organisations including Disability Action's Centre on Human Rights for People with Disabilities.
For the first time, the GMC has given doctors in the UK guidance on advance care planning for patients nearing the end of life. It emphasises to doctors the importance of listening to patients and recording an advance care plan to help ensure that everyone involved in treating the patient can understand and follow their wishes.
Creating opportunities for patients and families to talk about the care they want before death, and explaining the options open to patients in a way they can understand, will help doctors provide good standards of end of life care.
The guidance also covers decisions involving premature babies and infants, doctors’ responsibilities after a patient has died and how they should approach conversations about organ and tissue donation.
Dignity and respect for the individual are key themes in the guidance. Doctors must not discriminate or rely on preconceptions of what kind of care particular groups of patients – for example, people with disabilities, the elderly, or those from ethnic minority groups – want towards the end of life.
The GMC is encouraging doctors, other health professionals, patients and their family and carers to read the guidance and supporting resources, available to download from the GMC website: www.gmc-uk.org/end_of_life_care.
