The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) is a valid, effective and much needed tool to deliver high quality palliative care.  Use of the pathway requires considerable skill and experience.   The principles underlying the LCP emphasise accurate diagnosis, careful consideration of prognosis, good communication and holistic patient centred care.  When properly applied the LCP ensures a dignified, comfortable and distress free death, where death is inevitable.   The pathway facilitates improved communication about death and dying with patients and their families.   As with all other end of life decisions, it is good practice to make a decision as a team with the support of the family.   Starting a patient on the pathway is not an irreversible process.   Patients are regularly reviewed and the LCP may facilitate recovery in some cases, leading to patients being taken off the pathway.

For more information and/or interviews please contact Iona-Jane Harris on 020 7608 8573 or email press@bgs.org.uk
 
The British Geriatrics Society (BGS) is a membership association of doctors, nurses, therapists, scientists and others with a particular interest in the care of the frail older person and in promoting better health in old age.