• Internal medicine journal · Oct 2021

    Support for and willingness to be involved in voluntary assisted dying: A multisite, cross-sectional survey study of clinicians in Victoria, Australia.

    • Marcus Sellars, Mark Tacey, Rosalind McDougall, Barbara Hayes, Bridget Pratt, Courtney Hempton, Karen Detering, Rosemary Aldrich, Melanie Benson, Jeffrey Kirwan, Michelle Gold, Lisa O'Driscoll, and Danielle Ko.
    • Department of Health Services Research and Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
    • Intern Med J. 2021 Oct 1; 51 (10): 1619-1628.

    BackgroundIn the Australian state of Victoria, specialist doctors are central to the operation of voluntary assisted dying (VAD). However, a broad range of clinicians may be involved in the care of patients requesting or using VAD.AimsTo describe levels of support for and willingness to be involved in VAD and consider factors associated with clinician support for the VAD legislation and physicians' willingness to provide VAD in practice.MethodsA multisite, cross-sectional survey of clinicians in seven Victorian hospitals. All clinicians were invited to complete an online survey measuring demographic characteristics, awareness of and support for the VAD legislation, willingness to participate in VAD related activities and reasons for willingness or unwillingness to participate in VAD.ResultsOf 5690 who opened the survey, 5159 (90.1%) were included in the final sample and 73% (n = 3768) supported the VAD legislation. The strongest predictor of support for the VAD legislation was clinical role. Forty percent (n = 238) of medical specialists indicated they would be willing to participate in either the VAD consulting or coordinating role. Doctors did not differ in willingness between high impact (44%) and low impact specialty (41%); however, doctors specialising in palliative care or geriatric medicine were significantly less willing to participate (27%).ConclusionApproximately 73% of surveyed staff supported Victoria's VAD legislation. However, only a minority of medical specialists reported willingness to participate in VAD, suggesting potential access issues for patients requesting VAD in accordance with the legal requirements in Victoria.© 2021 Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…