About 20 terminally ill people in UK die in unrelieved pain each day, research finds

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1. An estimated 20 terminally ill people in the UK die in unrelieved pain each day, according to a study by the independent Office of Health Economics (OHE).

   According to its research, to be presented to MPs on Tuesday, one in four people receiving palliative care in England have “unmet pain needs”. The OHE said it used “the most conservative of estimates [suggesting] the true number is likely to be much larger”.

   It calculated that, even with the “highest possible standards of hospice-level palliative care”, more than 7,300 people across the UK died with unrelieved pain in the last three months of their lives in 2023. In 2019, the comparable figure was nearly 6,400 people a year – a 15% increase over four years.

   It also said that fewer than 5% of terminally ill people in England who needed hospice care in 2023 received it.

   The OHE’s findings will feed into an intensifying debate over the legalisation of assisted dying ahead of a historic vote by MPs on Friday. Supporters and opponents of Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill are making final efforts to persuade undecided MPs, with few willing to predict the result of the free vote.

2. disgusting! money should be available to stop that

3. Its easy buy research for the agenda you want to push!

4. Assisted dying is like legalising cannabis…when it’s done future generations will react with horror that there was a time when people were forced to die like dogs in agony…hell we wouldn’t even let dogs die like humans…

   And who is pushing to keep it banned? Some people have good points others like the church…the same church that covered up peado priests and we are expected to listen to this morally bankrupt organisation.

5. This is what terrifies me about accepting medical care. Once you’re in the system, all they do is deny you the official solutions, while stopping you finding your own unofficial ones.

   I have a lot of medical trauma already from past iterations of this. I fully expect to be one of those corpses they find two years after death when the bill payments start bouncing, because I just don’t trust doctors anymore to help people. :-/

   None of this surprises me.

6. What has really annoyed me in this whole saga is those who have come out to say that they had a loved one die and it didn’t persuade them the need for assisted dying. As if now they’ve had a sample of 1 or 2 they think that’s now applicable to an entire population and that the countless horror stories have no weight… It’s even worse when they were in positions of high profile power at the time yet don’t seem to have any consideration for the fact they might have got a different service (consciously or subconsciously) because of that.

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8. Dumb question but why is the pain unrelieved? Even without the dying part, can’t doctors at least pump you with enough morphine to sedate a horse or some shit as you leave the planet?

9. Literally all we need is a curtailment of the nanny state, in order to allow us the liberty to access reliable and humane suicide methods without help from the state. If this country would simply treat grown ups like grown ups; that would solve the problem entirely.

   Unfortunately, we’ve been heavily conditioned into this belief that we need the government to protect us from ourselves (even our own thoughts), and that problem only seems to be getting worse at the moment with the younger generations.

10. If this was one of my relatives I’d be off to score the purest smack I could find from a dealer. Not a chance in hell I’d let someone I love suffer unnecessarily. 

    I’d expect my loved ones to do the same for me.

11. I’ve been a hospital dr for 15 years and I’ve never seen anyone die in unrelieved pain.

12. What’s that, let people buy morphine over the counter, like they could before 1916 (when Britain ruled the waves)? Nah fam, we’ll just turn the NHS into a death-dispensing agency. BTW you’re a criminal if you can’t prove that your nitrous oxide is strictly for shoving whipped cream around.

13. If only doctors had been telling us for ages that pain relief in palliative care is not always reliable.

    Still, I hope every cowardly MP that gave the cop out answer “If we improve palliative care, there will be no need for assisted suicide” sees this

    Legalise assisted suicide now!

14. Having done placements in community palliative care and with MacMillan nurses in the past this isn’t shocking at all. Patients dying on wards not equipped or staffed to meet their needs because there’s no beds available in any hospices. It’s horrifying and has been going on for far too long now.

    That’s no shade to the nursing staff that really go above and beyond, but they can’t do everything sadly

15. If we consider it cruel to keep rodents alive when suffering immensely, with no chance for getting better, then we shouldn’t allow for our loved ones to suffer in the same circumstances

16. I find it hard to believe anyone against this has witnessed somebody have a bad death. I cannot conceive after having witnessed what can happen that you could possibly be against this.

    Or somehow think they are immune from spending their last days groaning in agony while they slowly die.

    I would not put it past the for profit care industry to be lobbying mps against this and think it should be a referendum.

17. I’ve said this before but anyone who has watched anyone be mummified alive in the dying process would NEVER object to the right to die. Also forgot to add in the sucking out of fluid from the throat a painful process.

18. I’m shocked if it’s not more. My wife received palliative care at home and it was left to ME to run around to pharmacies in a 20 mile radius until late at night to get the vials of pain meds she needed. Absolutely gross for those who are unable to do this and honestly ridiculous that I had to. The nurses that turned up were great but they can only administer what is available and that was ridiculously left to me and because it’s injectable it’s not exactly readily available.

    In their defence I think post brexit medication chaos played a part but even so it was a real headache.

    I ended up with so much left in the end too and they didn’t take it off me. I always see that as another stupid failing of them, my wife just died and I’m there with enough meds to OD 5 times over and they just walk out the door telling me to just drop it at the doctor’s surgery like I was in any mood for admin tasks. Surely there is a better protocol for that (for the record yes it was all properly disposed of eventually).

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