No doctor-assisted death at Lakeridge
VP: Service will not be provided until hospital is ready, more questions answered
Dr. Barry Guppy, Lakeridge Health’s vice-president of medical and academic affairs, says the hospital will not be providing assisted dying services until several issues have been resolved, including a new federal law being passed and its own internal task force completes its work on the subject. The federal government had until June 6 to pass a new law on physician-assisted, following a 2015 Supreme Court decision that struck down the ban.
By Graeme McNaughton/The Oshawa Express
With the deadline for the federal government to implement a new law for physician-assisted death come and gone without any new legislation being passed into law, healthcare providers across the country are in a state of legal limbo when it comes to providing the service.
For the time being, Lakeridge Health will not be one of them.
Dr. Barry Guppy, the Oshawa hospital’s vice-president of medical and academic affairs, tells The Oshawa Express that Lakeridge will not be providing such a service until all of the pieces are in place.
“Lakeridge has been organizing, for the past several months, for physician-assisted death. When we talk about readiness for physician-assisted death, we’ve looked at it from three perspectives,” he says, with the first being that a federal law is passed.
“There’s also professional readiness, and that means for us that the colleges that guide the behaviour of healthcare professionals, such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons, that they have sent us signals that the professionals that they oversee are ready and able to participate in physician-assisted death. So certainly, the College of Physicians and Surgeons has sent that signal, but some of the other colleges haven’t, and so since in a hospital, we rely on an interprofessional team, we need to ensure all of our professionals are ready.”
The final piece of the puzzle, Guppy says, is making sure the hospital itself is ready to go forward with such a service, ensuring that there are doctors on staff willing to provide the service, and that the required training and infrastructure is in place.
The federal government had until June 6 to pass into law new rules on physician-assisted death following a 2015 Supreme Court decision that struck down the ban. Currently, the legislation for physician-assisted death is sitting with the Senate, which implemented several changes from the version passed by the House of Commons.
“We will have to wait and see what legislation is passed so that we will know exactly what the rules will be around this,” Guppy says.
In the mean time, the province has introduced several measures to make up for the lack of federal laws on the books, saying it will set up a referral service so that doctors willing to provide the service can be connected with prospective patients. As well, the province has announced that the drugs necessary for such a procedure will be made available at no cost.