Doctors ‘routinely wrong’ with predictions on when terminally ill will die

Sign up to our free Living Well email for advice on living a happier, healthier and longer life Live your life healthier and happier with our free weekly Living Well newsletter Live your life healthier and happier with our free weekly Living Well newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Doctors often get it wrong when predicting how long terminally ill people have left to live, new research suggests. Paddy Stone, professor of palliative and end-of-life care at the research department, said: “Delivering the most appropriate care and treatments for those with terminal illnesses is often dependent on doctors making an accurate prognosis. “Being more senior or more experienced does not necessarily make one a better prognosticator but we now want to see if we can identify how and why some doctors are better at predicting survival than others and to determine if this is a skill that can be taught.” Stephanie Aiken, deputy director of nursing for the Royal College of Nursing, said: “For a dying person and their loved ones, uncertainty can make a very distressing time much harder to deal with.