Exploring attitudes toward physician-assisted death in patients with life-limiting illnesses with varying experiences of palliative care: a pilot study

BACKGROUND: On February 6th, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that competent adults suffering intolerably from a grievous and irremediable medical condition have the right to the assistance of a physician in ending their own lives, an act known as physician-assisted death, and later defined as medical assistance in dying, allowing for provision by a physician or a nurse practitioner. As of June 6th, 2016, this is no longer illegal across Canada. There is strong support amongst the general population for physician-assisted death, however there is no recent data on the attitudes of terminally ill patients. Our main objective was to gain information on terminally ill patients’ general and personal attitudes toward physician-assisted death. METHODS: This is an exploratory pilot study. We surveyed three groups of patients with life-limiting diagnoses: one with new referrals to palliative care; one with no palliative care involvement; and one with prior and ongoing management by a palliative care team. Respondents were surveyed twice, approximately two weeks apart, and rated their general attitudes toward physician-assisted death and the hypothetical consideration of physician-assisted death for oneself on a five-point Likert scale at baseline and follow-up. Respondents with new referrals to palliative care were surveyed before and after palliative care consultation. This study was approved by The Western University Health Sciences Research Ethics Board and Lawson Health Research Institute. RESULTS: We surveyed 102 participants, 70 of whom completed both surveys (31% dropout rate). Participants in all groups predominantly responded between somewhat agree (4 on a 5-point Likert scale) and strongly agree (5 on the Likert scale) when asked about their general attitude toward physician-assisted death. Patients with prior palliative care involvement reported the highest average ratings of hypothetical consideration of physician-assisted death for oneself on a 5-point Likert scale (3.4 at baseline; 3.9 at follow-up), followed by patients with a new palliative consultation (3.2 at baseline; 3.3 at follow-up), and patients with no palliative involvement (2.6 at baseline; 2.9 at follow-up). CONCLUSIONS: Given the preliminary results of this pilot study, we can conclude that terminally ill patients generally agree that physician-assisted death should be available to patients with life-limiting illnesses. Furthermore, descriptive data show a trend for higher hypothetical consideration of physician-assisted death in those patients with prior and ongoing palliative care involvement than patients without palliative involvement. Responses in all groups remained fairly consistent over the two-week period. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12904-018-0304-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.