Charity backs legal action on CPR

A charity is backing potential legal action against the government over concerns seriously ill coronavirus patients’ human rights are being ignored over “do not attempt CPR” decisions.

Compassion In Dying is supporting threatened legal action from Kate Masters, whose family previously won a landmark legal case over the decisions.

Her late father David Tracey brought a successful judicial review establishing a violation of his late wife Janet’s human rights while she was treated in hospital following a fatal car crash in 2011.

Ms Masters said the decision-making process around the “do not attempt CPR” orders has “become opaque, inconsistent and deficient” in the wake of the pandemic.

Law firm Leigh Day has sent two letters to Health Secretary Matt Hancock before legal action formally starts, after Ms Masters became concerned the orders were being imposed in “seemingly blanket ways, without consultation with patients or their families and showing a great amount of confusion within the general public over the need for consent”.

Her family’s case in 2014 established there was a legal duty to consult with and inform patients if an order was placed on their records except in very narrow circumstances.

Compassion In Dying has also written to Mr Hancock, urging him to improve the “availability of accurate and accessible national guidance” regarding CPR decisions.

The charity said it received more than 1,000 calls over two years before the pandemic from people feeling ignored or abandoned, and health and care professionals saying there is a lack of clarity.

It said around 7% of all queries to its information line related to CPR and “do not attempt CPR” between 2017 and 2019.

Some patients do not want to undergo CPR as they do not want to risk being left with a poor quality of life if they do survive, and feel abandoned if these preferences are not listened to.

Others and their families have not had “do not attempt CPR” decisions communicated with them, the charity said.

Davina Hehir, the charity’s director of policy and legal strategy, said: “The pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated ongoing problems concerning the lack of accurate and accessible national guidance regarding CPR, which must now be addressed as a matter of urgency.”