GPs caring role

WITH regards to the debate about end-of-life care, there was a time when a GP understood that his first duty was to save life, and his second to relieve suffering. If a life could not be saved, then relief of suffering became his priority.

GPs were licensed to provide end-of-life care and to certify the cause of death. A complaints procedure was in place, but rarely used. The system worked.

Then came Harold Shipman – not a poorly-qualified doctor, simply a criminal. His misdeeds so appalled the nation that the qualifications of all doctors came under suspicion. That Shipman’s misuse of drugs should have been identified early on by the drugs inspectorate operating under the Dangerous Drugs Act was ignored.

End-of-life care is individual. It defies definition on which legislation can be based. We should accept this and return to a system in which responsibility for interpretation of individual circumstances is the responsibility of the attending doctor and the complaints procedure widely understood – but in which the inspection of the distribution and use of dangerous drugs in the NHS actually works.

DR GORDON GASKELL

Chalmers Crescent

Edinburgh