‘I’m a palliative care nurse — here’s why I changed my mind on assisted dying’

A nurse who helped pioneer palliative care services in says she changed her mind on after realising some patients can “never be as free from suffering as they, or we, would have wanted”. Harriet Copperman, 79, was awarded an OBE in recognition of her work providing care to help people wanting to die at home from the 1970s.

At the time, she thought patients who asked for help to die just needed more support to help manage their symptoms. But she now believes that people facing an inevitable death should have the option of requesting help to die at a time of their choosing. Ms Copperman said that view had only strengthened since her own diagnosis of tongue eight years ago.

She added: “I’ve had surgery but it’s never certain that it’s gone. If I get a recurrence, I’m facing something pretty horrific, which can involve asphyxiation, not being able to eat or drink, having tubes and nasty smelling fungating wounds and all sorts of things.

“I really would like the opportunity to have a choice. I have got choices at the moment but none of them are very appealing — going to Dignitas, starving myself to death.

“Many people want the option. I would be so reassured to know that if I get a recurrence, I can opt-out at some point in a comfortable way.”

End-of-life care was transformed following the launch of the first modern hospice by Dame Cicely Saunders in 1967.

Shortly afterwards, Ms Copperman began working with a team at St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney. She recalled: “We went out into the community trying to enable as many patients as possible, who wanted it, to die in their own homes and their own beds.

“It meant we provided an on-call, 24 hours a day, seven-days-a-week service, which you can only do when you’re young and have got some energy.”

The work was tough but rewarding, Ms Copperman said. She added: “There were patients who really didn’t have a good death, or may well have wanted assisted dying, but it wasn’t something we talked about.”

After she retired in the late 1990s, the nurse decided that “palliative care wasn’t the whole answer” and became involved with campaigning for assisted dying.

She also witnessed a close friend die from . Ms Copperman said: “She ended up having the most awful death in spite of the best hospice care available. It was long, drawn-out and awful. And that can leave a very distressed, angry family.

“I know there is so much controversy now over this Bill, but assisted dying is working around the world. There’s risk in everything. You can’t make any law risk-free.”

The Association for Palliative Medicine strongly opposes efforts to legalise assisted dying in the UK and says the vast majority of its members oppose it. However, Ms Copperman said she believed some colleagues were afraid to “put their heads above the parapet”.

She added: “Of course we want better palliative care but that’s not a reason to delay the assisted dying Bill. It’s actually quite a cruel thing to say, ‘Hundreds more people can suffer because I don’t want this law’.”

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying Bill is undergoing line-by-line scrutiny and is set to face a further vote in the House of Commons next month.

Ms Copperman, of Barnet in , urged MPs to “listen to your constituents”. She added: “Independent polling indicates that around 75% of the population is in favour. We turned the country upside down with with a very small majority.

“Some MPs may be interpreting this free vote as them voting according to their conscience, but they are representing their constituents. If they don’t feel they can do that, perhaps they should consider a different career.”