HEALTH CARE
perience with her chronically disabled son who, in response
to the media attention given to the Latimer case, felt the
need to clarify with his family, that no matter how much it
hurt, he could take it and they didn’t need to kill him.
Deeply affected by this experience she added, “So there are
vulnerable people who will be living in a sense of risk, if we
don’t resolutely say that we are here to heal.”
Another physician offered an alternate perspective, and
questioned whether we have the right to limit a person’s
right to die solely on the grounds that we do not agree
with their choice. He emphasized that physicians must not
judge patients’ choices regarding medically assisted dying
or abandon them on the basis of these choices.
“We don’t have to do anything we’re not comfortable doing,” he said, “but we must not abandon them – we need to
support and care for them.”
Palliative care
Several physicians commented that the demand for medical
aid in dying is a consequence of inadequate or inaccessible
palliative care. This is in line with reports from some palliative physicians who say that requests from their patients to
assist in dying are extremely rare or non-existent.
According to the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association, only 16-30% of the population who should be receiving palliative care, is getting it. This number is grossly inadequate considering 100% of people are going to die.
This statistic is due in part to lack of resources but also to
lack of awareness in both the physician population and the
public on what exactly palliative care is and when it should
be initiated.
‘‘
Too often patients are referred to palliative care only in the
days before death or not at all, noted Dr. Blackmer, despite
the urgings of palliative care specialists that physicians start
palliative care, not during the dying process but during the
living process, when there’s been a life-limiting illness diagnosed. If palliative care is started earlier, better attention can
be given to maintaining the highest quality of life possible
throughout the illness trajectory.
“There is still a lot of education we need to do around what
palliative care is and when to start that,” he emphasized, if
palliative care access is to be improved.
A palliative approach to care
Accessibility is a particularly relevant issue here in Saskatchewan where a full third of the population live in rural parts
of the province where access to palliative care may be limited; and where it is available, the commute might be too
strenuous for patients or their families.
A partial solution to this may be what palliative specialist Dr.
Jose Pereira calls “the palliative approach.”
“The word palliati ٔ