More doctors and nurses are needed to service the great numbers of people seeking death by assisted suicide [1] in the Australian state of Queensland.
“I’ve accepted a huge number of [first] requests and we are managing but we just simply don’t have enough practitioners for a sustainable service,” says practitioner Claus Bader.
When voluntary assisted dying (VAD) became legal in Queensland this year, he says they weren’t expecting the “tsunami” of cases which followed.
“[It’s] almost like a continuous wave of choice and determination for people wanting to access the service,” Dr Bader said.
He also wants more money to compensate doctors and to allow for an e-service, in place of face-to-face meetings.
The Commonwealth Criminal Code limits the use of phone, email, fax and video communication to discuss “suicide-related material”. Prescriptions can’t be sent electronically and some assessments can’t be completed remotely.
Dr Bader said for patients in the final stages of the process, those discussions could take two minutes.
“We’re always forced to kind of skirt around the edges of the Criminal Code, while trying to stay just within its boundaries,” Dr Bader said.