Times to die

Accelerating National Health Service cutbacks in England have chaplains concerned patients of religious faith facing operations or even death without the opportunity of spiritual comfort. NHS "cutbacks in the out-of-hours services mean that you should not die out of hours if you want spiritual help. Die only between nine and five,” warned Carol English who works with the College of Health Care Chaplains in London.


Archbishop Vincent Nichols, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said the NHS reduces the sick and the dying to “a bundle of genes and actions. There is a hidden violence in so many of our systems, even those of care, because their operational mode is reductionist. If we reduce death to a clinical event and manage it through a series of standard procedures then we do not deal with death well, either clinically or humanly.”