The study was developed, and data was collected, during her Academic Foundation Programme training and was supervised by Drs Sarah Purdy and Lesley Wye. The aim of this study was to explore GPs’ views and experiences of the process of identifying patients at the end of life, particularly when considering patients with a non-malignant diagnosis.

Twelve interviews were carried out with GPs in Bristol, Somerset and North Somerset. Data analysis is ongoing, but emerging themes include the difficulties prognosticating in non-malignant disease, the way in which the medical profession, and society as a whole, views death and dying and the variation in the systems in place for managing end of life patients within individual practices.