New guidance on end of life care launched
About the guidance
New guidance for doctors, Treatment and care towards the end of life: good practice in decision making, came into effect on 1 July 2010.
This guidance replaces the booklet Withholding and withdrawing life-prolonging treatments (2002). It expands on the guidance in Consent, patients and doctors making decisions together, which sets out the principles on which good clinical decisions should be based, and provides a framework for good practice when providing treatment and care for patients who are reaching the end of their lives.
View the guidance
You can download a PDF of the guidance (468 kb, pdf).
You can read the new guidance:
Copies of the guidance booklet will be sent to all registered doctors with the May/June edition of GMCToday.
Further copies can be obtained from GMC Publications (email publications@gmc-uk.org or phone +44 161 923 6602).
Welsh version of the guidance
A pdf version of the guidance in Welsh will be available to download shortly.
View the supporting materials
We have also published some additional materials to support the guidance. These consist of:
- a flow chart that sets out the decision making process where questions arise about a patient’s capacity to make their own decisions
- five short vignettes illustrating key points in the flowchart
- two longer case studies exploring issues arising from decisions about cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH), which we know can be particularly difficult for doctors, members of the healthcare team, patients and those close to them
- a short video highlighting the main issues covered in the guidance and including short clips from doctors, other healthcare professionals, a hospital chaplain and a patient on the most important factors in ensuring patients receive good treatment and care towards the end of life.
You can access the learning materials here.
Further materials will be developed as part of our ongoing programme to publicise the guidance and ensure that it is known, understood and put into practice by the medical profession.
Development of the guidance
You can read about the development of the guidance (1 mb, pdf) which explains the process we undertook during the review.
This included an initial consultation on issues for the guidance to cover and a wide-ranging public consultation held from March to July 2009 to test the draft guidance.