The doctors who assist in suicide on what it's like to end a life

Building a system for assisted death from scratch, Li found, was a daunting task. To protect doctors who wanted nothing to do with the practice, she created a specific MAID team for UHN: 18 people to do the assessments and 13 to do the procedure itself. When a patient requests a medically assisted death, the front line doctor alerts the team, which takes over the end-of-life process. Two doctors perform the assessments. A third performs the procedure.
Figuring out the best method for death was also complicated. In Oregon, where assisted death is legal, doctors can write patients a prescription for a lethal oral medication and then walk away. Canadian physicians were surprised to learn that the barbiturates used in that protocol weren’t available here. Instead, doctors and nurses deliver a series of drugs intravenously, a process that is far more intimate than writing a prescription. Assisted death, the polite euphemism used to describe the act, is really a misnomer. Doctors don’t “assist” in a death; they are the active agents. “We are doing euthanasia,” says Li. “We are actively ending a life. And it’s very new to us.”

The doctors who assist in suicide on what it's like to end a life