Category: Assisted suicide

Kalgoorlie GP calls for euthanasia ‘kill clinics’

Kalgoolrie Miner

Jason Mennell

A longstanding Kalgoorlie-Boulder GP says the State Government should introduce “kill clinics” if proposed euthanasia laws receive the parliamentary seal of approval.

Dr Mal Hodsdon believes it would be “immensely unfair” of politicians to put the onus on GPs to sign off on people’s deaths.

Instead, Dr Hodsdon feels the State Government should take full responsibility by establishing what he calls “kill clinics”, providing a one-stop shop for terminally ill patients wanting to end their lives. . . [Full text]

Assisted Suicide Case About Doctor Fired from Catholic Health Network Challenges Religious Freedoms

Newsweek

Jeffery Martin

Centura Health, a Catholic health care network in Colorado, fired a doctor who attempted to help a terminally ill man end his life. According to KDVR, the lawsuit filed against Centura will be going back to state court where questions about freedom of religion could be raised.

Dr. Barbara Morris wanted to prescribe life-ending drugs to Neil Mahoney, a 64-year-old with incurable cancer. Centura’s policies against assisted suicide allegedly violated state law. KCNC reports that after asking a state court to declare that she could not be sanctioned for attempting to help her patient end his life, Dr. Morris was dismissed from her position. . . . [Full text]

Facilitating an unethical practice is unethical

Psychiatric Times

Madelyn Hisaio-Rei Hicks*

I am an adult psychiatrist who has worked in public sector psychiatry in the US and the UK. In both countries, physicians struggle with the ethics and professional meaning of legalized or proposed physician-assisted suicide (PAS). I was recently asked by an organization to host a CME course titled “Best Practices in the End-of-Life Options Act.” Passed in 2016, the Act legalized the practice of PAS in California.

My response to the invitation

Thank you very much for your invitation to join in providing a CME about “Best Practices in the End-of-Life Options Act.”the very serious and complex ethical and legal issue of PAS.

At one point in my 14 years of examining and writing about PAS and euthanasia, I thought that, even though I found PAS to be unethical, in situations where it became legal, perhaps the best that psychiatrists and other physicians could do would be to provide thorough assessments and treatment options for individuals requesting PAS. . . [Full text]

Why people choose medically assisted death revealed through conversations with nurses

The Conversation
Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence

Barbara Pesut*, and Sally Thorne*

Since Canada legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016, as of Oct. 31, 2018, more than 6,700 Canadians have chosen medications to end their life.

Canadians who meet eligibility requirements can opt to self-administer or have a clinician administer these medications; the vast majority of people choosing MAiD have had their medications delivered by physicians or nurse practitioners. Canada is the first country to permit nurse practitioners to assess for medically assisted dying eligibility and to provide it. . . .

. . . Our most recent research involved interviews with 59 nurse practitioners or registered nurses across Canada who accompanied patients and families along the journey of medically assisted dying or who had chosen to conscientiously object. Nurses worked across the spectrum of care in acute, residential and home-care settings. . . .[Full Text]

‘Assisted suicide is not always a crime’: rules Italian court

The  Guardian

AFP in Rome

Italy’s constitutional court has ruled it was not always a crime to help someone in “intolerable suffering” kill themselves, opening the way for a change of law in the Catholic country.

Parliament is now expected to debate the matter, which was highlighted by the Milan trial of an activist who helped a tetraplegic man die in Switzerland.

Anyone who “facilitates the suicidal intention … of a patient kept alive by life-support treatments and suffering from an irreversible pathology” should not be punished under certain conditions, the top court ruled. . . [Full text]