I would find it too morally distressing to send one of my dying patients out of my hospice to the other side of the city to have their assisted death. I wonder if other hospice and palliative care team members share similar feelings. I know definitely that some members of other teams have no qualms about discharging their patients home for assisted death. What about patients who don’t have a home of their own, or who are unable to be home for their assisted death? Where can they go? Unfortunately, the answer from other hospice teams has been, “Anywhere but here.” This is a situation known as a forced transfer, something I have encountered many times in the past almost three years since assisted dying became legal in New Zealand, and we started hosting assisted deaths.

Some of these team members also have no qualms about sending a patient, known to be in their last hours of life before an assisted death, into rush hour traffic. Maybe the same team members have made it clear to the patient and family what their personal views are about the choice the patient has made. The dying person on the receiving end may feel judged and even more vulnerable. What happened to the care part of palliative care? Everyone is entitled to their opinions but when you are at work patients deserve to be met with staff members’ best professional selves, not their strongest personal opinions. For some team members even talking about assisted dying makes them feel uncomfortable, and they share this discomfort with the patients they are supposed to be caring for. Do the staff feel uncomfortable? What about the person who is dying? Can we please treat people with compassion and humanity? How would you feel if you were on the other side of the bed?