The future NHS will not cure dying – but it can smooth the transition

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. What about planning ahead and respecting people’s choices for place of care or treatments they want to avoid, or access to expert supervision of changing healthcare needs as the end of life approaches? It is estimated that of the National Cancer Research Institute annual budget of more than £600m, less than 0.7 per cent goes to palliative care research: that’s 70p in every £100 of research spending. GPs have been tasked for decades to “find their 1 per cent” – to try to identify those people who are likely to be in their last months to years of life and to invite conversations with them that will begin to shape personalised care plans for when the end of life looms closer. The future NHS requires staff to be trained in, and familiar with, “ordinary dying”: able to recognise it and offer appropriate supportive care without unnecessarily complicating the process by escalation of burdensome medical interventions that won’t prevent our death, but may well prolong our dying.