My heart goes out to those of you who have lost loved ones in difficult circumstances.
My own experience of the Liverpool Pathway is with my Mum several years ago. She was admitted to hospital having had a silent heart attack. She had had some form of dementia for a number of years, but was able to live independently, however needed reminding to eat. I told the hospital staff this and they allegedly wrote it in her care plan.
One visiting time I noticed that she didn't have a menu request slip for the following day and when I asked a nurse where I could get one for her, I was told that she had been put on the pathway "ages ago".
Someone took the decision, without consulting any of her family (I was down as next of kin) to put a vulnerable woman with dementia, on the pathway. Consent was never sought. It is of course possible that someone mentioned it to my Mum (as the guidelines say that there should always be a discussion with the patient or family or both), but having dementia she was in no right mind to understand.
I argued long and hard with the staff to try and get the decision reversed. I tried to feed her myself, but she must have had food witheld for so long, that she couldn't tolerate more than a couple of spoonfuls of anything and so couldn't get any nutrition in her system.
Throughout her time in hospital, the 'hands on' nursing staff were wonderful and treated her with care, but they had to slavishly follow the instructions from the higher ups, who held all the power to decide how things would go. They were despicable.
An FOI request in 2012 showed that two thirds of NHS trusts had received incentive payments for meeting targets for using the LCP, and that such payments totalled £12 million or more (source: John Bingham, "NHS millions for controversial care pathway", The Telegraph, 1 November 2012.)
This makes me angry, even after 9 years, to think that Mum was simply a target to be achieved.
The Liverpool Pathway is a disgusting and inhumane process, that is nothing short of legalised assisted death.