Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you for asking that. I'm not sure I have the answers for those either. I think the role of telemedicine was mentioned. If we're looking at a patient who has requested a physician-assisted death and is in one of these communities in which there is only one physician group,

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Certainly I can imagine it. As any physician who has provided palliative care does, I prescribe lethal doses of drugs to patients all the time without the expectation that they will take them. Just to clarify that for the committee, if I have a patient who has terminal cancer, f

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I'm not sure what that process is in those provinces, so it's hard for me to comment specifically. I think there are a variety of networks in different provinces related to a variety of medical conditions, and some of them work well. Some of them do not. I think that over the nex

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Certainly. I think it's the other way around, though: palliative care is physician-assisted death. Palliative care is the assistance of someone through the last stages of life and involves symptom management, including pain management and so on. I think that whatever legislation

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Absolutely. Various witnesses have expressed approaches to this with legal frameworks, and so on, and all of those are challenging when we consider the circumstances in rural Canada. Seeing one psychiatrist in rural Canada is a challenge, never mind two. There was a proposal tha

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Yes, I meant if this is a patient who has a psychiatric condition that is causing irremediable suffering. In cases in Europe, some caveats have already been expressed about how that has panned out for certain patients. However, I am talking about a case in which a patient is suff

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I think it's an issue of determining competence. That's something that somebody with training can do, whether that training is as a physician, a nurse, or a nurse practitioner. As has been suggested by others, I think that if you're looking at judicial oversight of all this, or a

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you for asking the SRPC to make a presentation to the committee. The SRPC is a national voice for Canadian rural physicians. Our mission is to provide leadership for rural physicians and to promote sustainable conditions and equitable health care for rural communities. I