Category: Assisted suicide

Dr. Coelho’s ‘crazy’ battle for conscience rights

The Catholic Register

Michael Swan

It’s not surprising patients fall in love with Dr. Ramona Coelho. Not just because she’s a young, pretty doctor who smiles easily, laughs frequently and focuses her attention completely on whoever is talking to her.

Her patients in London, Ont., know that she’s a doctor who is in it for something more than the status, money or security attached to most medical practices.

“I love my work,” Coelho confesses. “I love being a doctor. I love helping people and being with them — trying to find solutions for them.”

Her practice is heavily slanted to marginalized patients. Her waiting room is full of refugees, ex-cons, the poor. Many of her patients are on permanent disability. . . . [Full text]

 

Bill raises questions about delicate balance of doctor and patient rights near life’s end

CN Cronkite News
Arizona PBS

Saundra Wilson

PHOENIX – “Please don’t ask me to do that,” Dr. Paul Liu, a pediatric critical-care physician, said to grieving parents who had asked him to quietly end their child’s life.

Liu said he was frank with the parents, who wanted to put a stop to their sons’s suffering from a terminal illness. He advised them not to pursue an early death for their child because it’s not something they would want on their conscience.

“In their pain and suffering they wanted to end it much more quickly than natural courses would take,” said Liu, who recalled the story as he spoke in favor of Senate Bill 1439 at a Senate health and human services committee meeting this week.

Some support the bill to shield health care providers from retaliation or discrimination if they deny an ailing patient’s wishes to avoid expansive medical measures or, as the bill reads, end their life early, such as by “assisted suicide, euthanasia or mercy killing.”

“We need this protection to be able to do what our conscience tells us to do,” said Liu, a doctor at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. . . . [Full text]

 

Doctors struggling to cope with assisted death

Ottawa has seen 28 people take their life with the help of a doctor since legislation came into force.

Vancouver Metro

Ryan Tumilty

Since new legislation came into place last year, 28 people in Ottawa have ended their lives with the help of a physician.

Advocates say the new legislation, which came into force last June, is taking  a toll on some doctors, who are finding it difficult to help patients who want to die. . . .

Jeff Blackmer, vice-president for medical professionalism at the Canadian Medical Association, said doctors have been telling his group that they struggle with taking part in assisted-death procedures. . ..  [Full text]

 

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About 30 hospitals opting out of Colorado’s medical aid-in-dying law

Three major health systems have announced they will not participate

The Denver Post

Jennifer Brown

Up to 30 Colorado hospitals are opting out of the state’s new medical aid-in-dying law, either fully or in part, but whether that means the doctors they employ are banned from writing life-ending prescriptions is a controversy that could wind up in court.

At this point, terminally ill Coloradans who want to end their lives under the law will need to find out whether their physicians are allowed to participate.

Three major health systems with 30 hospitals among them — Centura Health and SCL Health System, both religiously affiliated, and HealthOne — have announced they will not participate in the law. What that means for doctors, though, varies by system. . . [Full text]