This was a question that came to mind after a past colleague theorised about changing a patient’s prognosis to more than six months left to live to stop them from accessing the assisted dying service. I was shocked that they would consider doing something like that. In plain English, it would be telling a lie. Lying to a patient and not giving them your true medical opinion. An opinion that required at least 13 years of training to develop, but one they could consider defiling by not telling the truth. To me, this was wrong on many levels and was one of the main reasons I didn’t miss the ex-colleague much.

Honesty is something our patients deserve. We need to let them know what is going on to the best of our abilities. We are not fortune-tellers and we cannot predict the future but we can provide our best educated guess. People usually want to know how much time they have left as it puts a lot of things into perspective. It makes them focus on what is really important to them. Who is important to them, and who they want to spend their precious time with. What things do they still need to complete given the limited time left? Where they draw the line. What is too much for them to handle? To rob them of these opportunities is wrong.

A person’s prognosis is not owned by the doctor, it is the patient’s prognosis, not their family’s, or their parents’ or children’s. It is their own prognosis. They can do what they like with the information. It is their property and can be used as they see fit. To deny someone the truth about their end of life is such a bad thing to do. You might not agree with what a patient, or what another person chooses, but that does not give you the right to sabotage their plans. They have already lost so much control of their life and a so-called professional would try to stop them from attaining a dying wish.

We are supposed to provide patient-centred care, not doctor-centred care. We exist to serve our patients. They do not exist just to provide us with work, they have lives of their own, stories of their own. It is not about us. Palliative care is supposed to be focused on the needs of the patients and not the needs of the providers. Anything else is just wacko.