Cancer patient makes heartfelt case for right to die at hospice

A cancer patient has given a heartfelt explanation of why she wants to die in a hospice at a meeting discussing end-of-life care. It came after a shortage of consultants to run the West London’s Pembridge Hospice prompted a review of the care on offer.

Georgina Lansley, pictured above, has a terminal pancreatic tumour and talked about her experience using the day care support at the hospice at St Charles Hospital in Ladbroke Grove.

The 59-year-old Westminster resident, who has an incurable stage 4 cancer, said: “Pembridge is a lifeline for me.”

She said a cancer diagnosis is “an assault of every emotion that you have, everything comes tumbling down around you”.

Miss Lansley said: “I want to die in a hospice. I do not want to die at home with my family and children and grandchildren feeling the responsibility of looking after me as a dying woman.

“I want dignity. I do not want to lie in bed [at home] waiting for a nurse to come. I do not deserve that. This is the last act that humanity can do for a fellow human being, give them a dignified death.”

Patients could potentially have to “die in isolation” if a shortage of consultants caring for people at the end of their lives meant the 13-bed Pembridge Hospice had to shut its inpatient ward permanently. It has been been closed since 2018 after the previous consultant left and was not replaced. Health campaigner Jim Grearly told Kensington and Chelsea council’s adult social care and health select committee on January 20: “Many of us don’t have families around here and they can’t look after us and a lot of our neighbourhoods are hollowed out. Those of us who are older have transient neighbours who can’t look after us.

“One of the consequences of the closure of Pembridge is that people die in isolation.”

The temporary closure of the 13-bed hospice in October 2018 followed problems finding a replacement consultant to oversee it. It prompted a review of the end-of-life care offered by Central and West London Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG). Since then beds have been found for patients who need specialist palliative care at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, the Royal Trinity Hospice in Clapham and St John’s Hospice in St John’s Wood in Westminster.

There is a shortage of palliative care consultants nationally. James Benson, the chief operating officer of Central London Community Healthcare Trust, which commissions the Pembridge Hospice, said that while the review was under way, it was also impossible to recruit a consultant. Dr Neville Purssell who is the chairman of Central London CCG said people want to choose where they die.

He said the review found that there was “an inequality of access to service,” with only 48 per cent of people in Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham and Westminster currently able to access community and day palliative care.