Chronic underfunding in palliative care is key cause of poor care of dying people

Longstanding underfunding of palliative care training and services is a major cause in the NHS in England of failure to provide good care, MPs have been told.

Experts in palliative care appearing before the parliamentary select committee on public administration and constitutional affairs on 15 September said that doctors received only a tiny amount of formal training in this aspect of care.

The committee was holding a one-off evidence session on the findings of the Office of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s May 2015 report Dying Without Dignity.1 That report said that terminally ill people were enduring painful and upsetting deaths because of failures by the NHS in England to properly …