Medical ethicist and former Palliative care doctor Dr Gillian Wright explains how the end of life can be managed with care and compassion.

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The UK leads the world in palliative ‘end of life’ care. The modern hospice movement was founded here and palliative care has been recognised as a specialist branch of medicine for over 30 years.

Good palliative care attends to the needs of the patient as a whole, whether those needs are physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual or social. Through effective pain management, and good communication with the patient, symptoms can be well controlled.

Dr Gillian Wright is a medical doctor who trained in general hospital medicine and palliative care. She changed to work in the sphere of medical ethics in 2018 and worked for the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics in Edinburgh until 2020. She now works for the campaign Our Duty of Care, which opposes the introduction of assisted suicide and euthanasia to the UK