As an emergency physician, I make agonising life or death decisions every day. When caring for a terminally-ill patient whose organs are failing, and who can’t recognise her own children, I work with colleagues and family members to decide whether to withdraw treatment. We do this when both evidence and experience suggest there is no hope left.

These decisions are incredibly sensitive. Yet compared to the intense controversy over Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which Parliament will vote on tomorrow, the public doesn’t seem that concerned by end-of-life medical care. Critics of the Bill worry about doctors will be “playing God” by interfering in the workings of death. But trying to ensure our dying patients a dignified death is already part of the job. Not only do physicians determine the limits of care: we also choose when and whether to withdraw treatment. The question isn’t whether these decisions about death will be made, but how best to make them with dignity.