"There is a time to be born and a time to die."
While we can't stop death, how and when we die is one of the most controversial issues in front of society today.
"Right to Die" and "Die with Dignity" advocacy groups compete with the movement to build a national comprehensive program that ensures every Canadian has access to quality hospice palliative care.
Over the last 10 years, 30 national organizations that are members of the Quality End-of-Life Care Coalition of Canada have worked together to improve the end-of-life care for all Canadians.
The goals are to improve access to care, increase the number of professionals and volunteers with the skills to provide high quality end-of-life care, promote research that will improve care, support family members who care for people who are dying and educate Canadians about their choices at end of life.
Yet in February of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously struck down the ban on providing a doctor-assisted death to mentally competent but suffering and irremediable (irreversible) patients.
One wonders if the courts and politicians have defined what "suffering" means? Is the cry for people wanting more control over their dying due to a lack of access to skilled hospice palliative care?
The focus for politicians and advocacy groups should be to concentrate on advocating for more palliative care programs to allow people to live their lives with comfort, meaning, dignity and hope until the moment they die.
Some people who come into hospice care talk about wanting doctor-assisted dying, but when they receive skilled palliative care, they find peace and comfort, and no longer wish to end life this way.
In a palliative care setting,
the focus of care is relief of suffering - physical, emotional, social, intellectual, financial and spiritual distress.
People have a chance to state their preferences for treatment, place limits on that treatment (no food or hydration), express wishes where they want to die and what they want done when death is expected, including organ donation.
Palliative care physicians have the knowledge and skills to manage pain and distressing symptoms. With the use of high doses of opioids, most pain, breathlessness and other distressing symptoms can be controlled.
Doctors use palliative sedation as an option for people whose symptoms cannot be managed by any other means.
The goal of palliative sedation is to relieve suffering by controlling symptoms through sedation, not shorten a person's life.
Nancy Macey is the executive director of the Delta Hospice Society.
