B.C. a leader in assisted death, advocate says
Other provinces still catching up, advocate says
While other provinces try to piece together programs co-ordinating care for patients who want medical help ending their lives, B.C.’s health authorities have quietly created a system that’s winning praise from advocates.
This weekend, Ontario’s health minister said he hopes to develop a system that would allow patients to bypass doctors who object to assisted death, and connect them with health care providers who can help.
A similar system has been in place across B.C. for months already, according to Sue Hughson of Dying with Dignity Canada’s Vancouver chapter.
“We’re ahead, I’m happy to say. I was reading this (news story) and I was gloating a little bit, although I don’t like to gloat,” she said.
Each of B.C.’s five regional health authorities now has a MAID (medical assistance in dying) patientcare co-ordinator whose job it is to provide information about the process and connect people with doctors who can help.
Hughson has spoken with all of these regional co-ordinators, offering her group’s help connecting with volunteers and doctors. She checked off the final name on her list Friday, when she called up the MAID co-ordinator in Northern Health.
“Here I was, thinking she’s really going to need our help with a small population dispersed over a large area, and she said, ‘No thanks, we’ve got 33 providers.’ Some provinces don’t have two,” Hughson said.
B.C. isn’t the only province that’s tackled this problem. Manitoba and Alberta, for example, both have teams that help patients and their families access services.
In B.C., some MAID co-ordinators have reached out to Hughson’s group for help providing volunteers who can serve as witnesses for patients’ requests to access medically assisted death — federal law requires two witnesses to sign any request. Dying with Dignity currently has about 20 volunteer witnesses in the Lower Mainland and about eight in the Victoria area.
“For many people who are quite elderly or underserviced or compromised in other ways, or who don’t have a large body of friends and family to call on, or who may have people who object to their choice, we’re there,” Hughson said.
Overall, she believes B.C. has made good progress on implementing assisted dying since it became legal across the country last June. However, she’d still like to see more progress from some health care facilities and operators.
Although she didn’t mention Providence Health by name, the Catholic health authority has been resistant to change. Providence told its doctors last year that medically assisted deaths will not be offered at its hospitals, because the practice conflicts with the Catholic faith. Still, Hughson is optimistic. “While there are still areas, particularly within Providence, that I’d like to see improved, I have to say that we’ve had some very successful interactions on behalf of our patients,” she said.
Unlike in some other provinces, doctors in B.C. who object to assisted death on conscientious grounds aren’t required to refer patients to another practitioner. There aren’t any official estimates of the number of doctors in B.C. who are willing to provide medically assisted death.