Palliative care specialists’ reluctance to administer life-ending drugs indicates it may be easier to change laws than attitudes.
Toronto Star
MONTREAL―Quebec”s euthanasia law is the template and test case for the rest of the country, but problems emerging just months before the terminally ill can start demanding their deaths show that laws are easier to change than attitudes.
Since legislation was adopted in the summer of 2014 that would allow dying patients access to a life-ending drug cocktail under strict conditions, politicians here have celebrated the perception of Quebecers being the vanguards of social change.
But with time running out before Dec. 10 — the date that patients can begin requesting the procedure — hospitals and health-care providers are scrambling to draw up policies and find the staff who will carry out those patients” wishes.
If that wasn”t tough enough, some of those who might be expected to lead the change — palliative care physicians and hospice administrators — have let it be known that they are instead digging trenches for the battle.
“The vocation of a palliative care hospice is to provide care, and that doesn”t include medical aid in dying,” said Élise Rheault, director of Maison Albatros Trois-Rivières. . . [Full Text]