Assisted suicide could destroy the hospice movement

The hospice movement is one of the great achievements of post-war Britain. Inspired by the doctor Cicely Saunders, who in effect founded the field of palliative care, it has united cutting-edge research with a profound understanding of suffering and how to relieve it. Britain’s hundreds of hospices are Saunders’s legacy.

But can that legacy survive an assisted suicide law? ‘It has the potential to destroy the sector in its entirety,’ says Amy Proffitt, former president of the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM). If assisted suicide is integrated into palliative care, and hospices legally must facilitate it, then ‘many of the medical profession would leave the sector entirely’, Proffitt adds. Dr Dominic Whitehouse, a consultant at a Sussex hospice speaking in a personal capacity, tells me the bill would be ‘the death knell’ for hospices.

Under Kim Leadbeater’s bill, which faces a decisive Commons vote this month, doctors can decline involvement. But hospices and care homes cannot opt out. That has major implications. ‘Hospices are generally quite small places,’ says a consultant at one London hospice. ‘It’s not something you can just have in a corner.’ A doctor at a Yorkshire hospice adds: ‘If you are the only consultant in the hospice for a week, you will be present and you have a duty of care.’

‘This could be the end of hospice care as we know it,’ a consultant at a Welsh hospice says. ‘I would resign before being involved. Many others feel similarly.’ A consultant at a different hospice in Wales told me: ‘I can think of multiple staff who would leave… Senior medics wouldn’t want to be involved.’ Speaking to staff across 17 adult hospices – one-tenth of the total in England and Wales – I repeatedly heard similar sentiments.