Liverpool Care Pathway – Does The Pathway Have A Heart?

“Any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.

“Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question.

“Does the path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it does not, it is of no use.”

- Carlos Castaneda; The Teachings of Don Juan

The heart of this path, if it has a heart, is to provide a merciful release from cruel shackles of pain that otherwise might make our last moments in this life an unbearable torture – for us to bear and for our loved ones to watch.

The Pathway was designed at the Marie Curie Hospice in Liverpool specifically for the terminally diagnosed patient and to recognise when a point had been reached that death was near or imminent so as to provide as peaceful and gentle path from this world as might be provided. These patients were already diagnosed to be dying from cancer; the Pathway was not the tool used to make that diagnosis, but a means - a 'pathway' to follow - to determine that point.

The LCP has become a path without a heart. There is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.