AT APA
SAN DIEGO (FRONTLINE MEDICAL NEWS) – The Veterans Health Administration has issued strict rules forbidding clinicians from doing anything to help patients kill themselves via physician-assisted suicide, which is now legal in certain cases in California, according to a psychiatrist who updated colleagues at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.
The VHA says clinicians may not make referrals to physicians who help patients commit suicide, said Kristin Beizai, MD , who is affiliated with the VA San Diego Healthcare System. Nor can they provide information about patient diagnoses outside of medical records or complete forms to support physician aid-in-dying (PAD), she said.
The VA San Diego system received queries from patients about assisted suicide even before the law in mid-2016 allowed physicians to provide deadly medications to some patients, said Dr. Beizai, who’s also with the University of California, San Diego.
“There was a lot of attention coming before the law was active,” she said, and more questions from patients arose after that time.
In addition to California, four other states ( Colorado , Oregon , Vermont , and Washington ) – and the District of Columbia – allow terminally ill people who meet certain conditions to commit suicide with the assistance of physicians. In addition, a court ruling in Montana appears to allow PAD there.
California’s law allowing PAD took effect after Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015 signed a bill passed by the legislature.
According to a recent report from the state of California, 111 people killed themselves during June-December 2016 by taking deadly medication prescribed by physicians. The patients must self-administer the medications. Of those 111 people, 90% were white, and most had college degrees. The majority had cancer.
The report also said 173 physicians had written 191 total lethal prescriptions, suggesting some patients – perhaps dozens – had not taken the drugs by the end of 2016.
In response to a query from Dr. Beizai about policies regarding PAD, VHA ethics officials sent word that clinicians must butt out when it comes to assisted suicide: “No practitioner functioning within his or her scope of duty may participate in fulfilling requests for euthanasia or PAD,” they said, regardless of what state law allows.
According to the VHA:
Clinicians are encouraged to explore issues like pain, depression, fears, and anxiety, Dr. Beizai said. The VHA has set up a six-step protocol on this front.
But the VHA is making it clear that patients who seek PAD elsewhere must not be abandoned. “Don’t disconnect from the patients if they determine they want to go that route,” said Dr. Beizai, who gave that message to VA San Diego staffers during an educational outreach program regarding PAD.
Dr. Beizai reported no relevant disclosures.
