Dr Peter Phillips, a recently retired consultant geriatrician and stroke physician, believes approving the bill will eventually result in its expansion as it has in other countries.
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00:00I suppose over the years I've been involved with thousands of patients under my care who've
00:07died while under my care. And in a hospital situation, on an elderly care ward, there
00:14are always four or five patients who are having end-of-life care. And our experience was that
00:21this was a very important aspect of care, and these patients were given high priority,
00:26they were looked after by the consultant, we saw them first, we wanted to see the patients
00:31and their relatives, we wanted to make sure they were comfortable and to answer any questions,
00:37to make sure that pain was relieved and suffering was minimised. And of course there are people
00:41with long-term illnesses, the so-called terminally ill, who have six months to live. But in my
00:50experience it's never been possible to accurately estimate how long people have to live. We
00:56invariably get it wrong, we underestimate it or overestimate it. So for people who have
01:05experience of medical care for people who are approaching the end of their life, it's
01:13very difficult to define the time frame. So I have some concerns about the bill and how
01:18it targets its population. The definition of people who need end-of-life care can vary. For
01:28example, in Canada they started off looking at people who are so-called terminally ill,
01:33and now we understand people with eating disorders, people with mental health problems,
01:39people who have served in the armed forces and have mental health problems, all of those are
01:45now eligible to come forward for assisted dying, which opens the door to a lot of frail and
01:55vulnerable people who are being invited now to volunteer for assisted dying, and in many cases
02:05they feel that they're in the way. The other thing is that in this country the NHS is in crisis,
02:10the shortage of resources, long waiting lists, and again this puts pressure on people who feel
02:19well I'm just wasting people's time and resources, why don't I just take the easy option and step
02:25aside and let people help me to end my life, which I think is a very sad state of affairs
02:35if people feel that they have to volunteer to assisted dying because the NHS is in crisis. So
02:44the thing that does give us dignity is that people love us and care for us and value us,
02:49and this is really what good quality end-of-life care is about in a civilised community, is valuing
02:59people and giving them dignity because we love them, because we know what a huge hole it leaves
03:05in their lives, in our lives, when they eventually die. So dignity involves being looked after,
03:16admitting that as a human being there are times when I need other people to help me and to be
03:22compassionate and loving towards me, and those are the principles that we would like to see
03:26developed in palliative care, not this rather callous solution of saying I wouldn't let my
03:33dog suffer like that, let's just get rid of them.