END OF LIFE WITH DIGNITY

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Conference
2015 National Retired Members Conference
Date
15 June 2015
Decision
Carried as Amended

Conference notes recent media reports highlighting the issue of elderly patients who are approaching the end of their lives often being left on trolleys in hospital corridors with insufficient pain relief and left alone to die.

Conference agrees this demonstrates a total lack of dignity, care and respect and as such is totally unacceptable. Whilst it is not the case in all hospitals, it is not too much to ask that as we approach the end of our lives we are treated with all due care, attention and privacy and that we are given adequate medication to die with dignity. Even if this was just one incident with one elderly patient then, that is one too many.

Conference instructs the National Retired Members’ Committee to liaise with the National Executive Council to campaign for the right to die in hospital with dignity.