Subtitle: The reality of end of life care for LGBT people
Publisher: Marie Curie
Country: UK
Pages: 44
Everyone should have the right to high-quality palliative care when they have a terminal illness, regardless of their condition, where they live, or their personal circumstances. The UK has been ranked as the best country in the world for the quality of palliative care on offer here. However, access to this care is patchy. One in four people who need palliative care miss out each year. LGBT people experience significant barriers to getting palliative care when they need it. This report explores why.
This report highlights real barriers that LGBT people have experienced in trying to access high-quality palliative and end of life care. These range from outright discrimination, such as a doctor who would not treat a lesbian woman without a chaperone, to more commonplace, but no less damaging issues, such as the experience of having to come out to each new healthcare professional encountered. Not all the stories in this report are of bad care. There are some examples where people get it right. But these tend to be in the minority.
