Executive Director Emeritus and Senior Consultant David Leven will provide this 3 hour lecture as part of the Global Bioethics Initiative Summer School.
Palliative care and hospice should be standards of care for seriously ill and dying patients. Most, but not all, suffering can be adequately addressed with the skillful addition of palliative measures to a patient’s treatment plan. For the small number of those dying patients whose suffering is not adequately addressed, medical aid in dying should be an available option. It is the process by which an adult, mentally competent, terminally ill patient, who doctors determine is likely to die within six months, self-consumes prescribed medicines, to end suffering and achieve a peaceful death.
The primary goal of this presentation is to educate attendees about the practice of medical aid in dying and why it should be legal as a last resort option for mentally competent, adult, dying patients.
Attendees will learn that: