Tag: palliative care

Position Paper of the Abrahamic Monotheistic Religions on Matters Concerning the End of Life

The position of Abrahamic religions on end of life and palliative care

News Release

Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development

Yesterday 28 October at the Casina PIo IV in the Vatican, 40 representatives of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths signed the joint Position Paper of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions on matters concerning the end of life.

Invited by the Pontifical Academy for Life, presided over by His Excellency Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the religious, including the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development Peter K. A. Turkson, have committed themselves in 12 points to stating that euthanasia and assisted suicide are morally and intrinsically wrong and should be prohibited without exception. Any pressure and action on patients to end their lives is categorically rejected.

A very important point for the mission of the Dicastery is that concerning  Health Care Workers that states that no health care worker should be forced or subjected to pressure to witness directly or indirectly the deliberate and intentional death of a patient through assisted suicide or any form of euthanasia, especially when such practices go against the health care worker’s religious beliefs, because there should be always respect for conscientious objection to acts that conflict with a person’s ethical values. This remains valid, continues the Paper, even if such acts have been declared legal at a local level or by categories of persons.

Very significant, the joint declaration also addresses the spiritual and material accompaniment of the terminally ill and their families, as well as the use of medical technology at the end of life and the promotion of palliative care.

Palliative care nurses quit ‘houses of euthanasia’

Catholic Herald

Simon Caldwell

Belgian nurses and social workers who specialise in treating dying patients are quitting their jobs because palliative care units are being turned into “houses of euthanasia”, a senior doctor has alleged.

Increasing numbers of hospital staff employed in the palliative care sector are abandoning their posts because they did not wish to be reduced to preparing “patients and their families for lethal injections”, according to Professor Benoit Beuselinck, a consultant oncologist of the Catholic University Hospitals of Leuven.

He said that after more than 15 years of legal euthanasia in Belgium “palliative care units are … at risk of becoming ‘houses of euthanasia’, which is the opposite of what they were meant to be”. . . [Full Text]

Assisted killing still part of Ontario’s palliative care plan

Catholic Register

Michael Swan

The agency responsible for expanding Ontario’s network of hospice care wants hospice patients to have the option of assisted suicide, even if most hospices and the majority of doctors oppose it.

“The OPCN (Ontario Palliative Care Network) promotes early and equitable access to hospice palliative care for all patients with a life-limiting illness, including individuals who have requested medical assistance in dying,” a spokesperson for the Ontario Palliative Care Network told The Catholic Register in an email.

The provincially-funded OPCN, a sub-agency of Cancer Care Ontario, “recognizes that there may be an intersection between palliative care and medical assistance in dying (MAID). Both medical assistance in dying and palliative care are health care services that exist within the health care system,” wrote Cancer Care Ontario communications advisor Jayani Perera. “However, the focus and mandate of the Ontario Palliative Care Network is advancing palliative care in the province.”

A year into legalized killing in Canada, the big question is how palliative care and hospice beds will be expanded, said bioethicist Bob Parke. Will governments fund hospices that refuse to perform or refer for assisted dying? . . [Full text]

 

Quebec’s split over euthanasia a warning for Canada

Palliative care specialists’ reluctance to administer life-ending drugs indicates it may be easier to change laws than attitudes.

Toronto Star

Allan Woods

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]

Palliative care centres say no to medically assisted death

West Island Palliative Care Residence won’t obey Quebec’s ‘dying with dignity’ law

CBC News

The director of the West Island Palliative Care Residence says patients seeking assistance with dying will have to go elsewhere.

“We are absolutely one of the 29 [palliative care programs in Quebec] that are opting out of providing this service,” says the residence’s executive director, Theresa Dellar.

“The basic philosophy of palliative care is we do nothing to hasten death, and obviously euthanasia does hasten death. Our philosophy to provide comfort, care and dignity at the end of life and to allow for the natural process of death to take place,” she said. . . . [Full text]