Thursday also turned out to be an interesting day.
The consultant affiliated to our hospice organised a seminar workshop for the staff to explore and discuss the law relating to assisted suicide within the health care setting and had organised for an Australian medic who was a specialist in Voluntary Assisted Dying to lecture us on the subject via zoom
For those that don’t know
Voluntary assisted dying (VAD) refers to the assistance provided to a person by a health practitioner to end their life. It includes:
- 'self-administration', where the person takes the VAD medication themselves (this is sometimes called physician-assisted suicide or dying), and
- 'practitioner administration', where the person is given the medication by a doctor (or in some Australian States, a nurse practitioner or registered nurse) (this is sometimes called voluntary euthanasia).
‘Voluntary’ indicates that the practice is a voluntary choice of the person, and that they are competent (have capacity) to decide to access VAD.
As you can see the law in Australia seems a million miles away from ours in the Uk, however the criteria for VAD is precise and can only be used with a diagnosis of conditions that are life limiting of only a few months . Conditions such as MND, disabilities or mental health do not fit the criteria.
It was a fascinating workshop and I felt that the Australian consultant was rather intrigued that he had been approached by a tiny Welsh Hospice to discuss his role rather than by a UK palliative care centre based in say London.
All of our hospice doctors, a good cross section of the nurses and support workers and a smattering of managers and Board Members turned up and on reflection I still am not sure how I feel about the whole subject.
Of course the positives seem humane and client focused but when I asked the Australia doctor what situations had “ gone wrong” for want of a better phrase he discussed two cases that were sobering.
One situation had a patient who had vomited after she had taken the medication and so didn’t die as was expected, while another had another patient taking his medication which was brought into him by a relative whilst he was an inpatient of a general hospital being looked after by nurses who had no clue he was about to take his own life.
The ethical implications from both situations hung heavy in the air.
Anyhow it’s Saturday today.
It’s early and we have all been out for a walk. Roger is almost fully housetrained now. He walks well on the lead and sits politely in the car, unlike Dorothy who is now always crated in Bluebell and who remains vociferously loud during any journey.
He’s eating better and is less frightened of anything he doesn’t know.
But he is a chewer.
I think we will all go to the beach this afternoon.
I’m meeting up with Gorgeous Dave later and we are going to The Storyhouse to see a one woman show with the title How to be Amazingly Happy
