Palliative care is one of the most important healthcare initiatives that can be offered.
When someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness, we as a society need to make sure that they are as comfortable as possible in their final years, months and weeks.
After all, a society should be judged by how well they treat their most vulnerable.
If this is the case, it appears that Quebec is falling short.
It was recently reported by Quebec’s College of Physicians that more and more Quebec residents are opting for assisted dying due to a lack of palliative care spaces in some of the province’s hospitals.
The letter sent by the college to Quebec’s Health Minister, Gaétan Barrette, says that a lack of palliative care doctors has led to the uneven distribution of care in different parts of the province.
The letter was damning.
“Patients, failing to benefit from such care, could have no other choice but to ask for medical aid in dying to end their days in dignity,” the letter says.
This was one of the main concerns of the opponents to the introduction of assisted dying legislation that was passed by the provincial government in 2016.
In 2016 alone, more than 450 Quebec residents were granted a medically-assisted death.
Dr. Charles Bernard, the president of the college, said that over the last two years, fewer and fewer doctors have chosen to specialize in palliative care, leaving the province at a shortage.
The health minster’s response?
Barrette says that the province’s five-year palliative care plan, which was launched in 2015, is progressing at a good pace.
This is what Barrette calls a good pace?
We’re now three years into the five-year plan and it doesn’t appear that Quebec has factored in the new assisted dying legislation and its impact on palliative care.
According to Bernard, by 2016 – just one year into the five-year plan – the healthcare system was already seeing a shortage of palliative care doctors.
It looks like the Quebec government has no clue what it’s doing.
It implements a plan that is already off the rails just one year into it.
To top it off, Barrette tells Quebec residents that the plan is progressing just fine.
All the while, people in this province who can’t obtain palliative care because of a shortage of doctors are turning instead to medically-assisted dying.
At a time when these folks are at their most vulnerable, mismanagement is forcing them to end their lives early instead of receiving the care they ought to be able to get.
This is an absolute shame.
Medically-assisted dying is an important part of a healthcare system. Those who suffer every minute of every day shouldn’t be expected to have to endure that while waiting for their time to come.
On the other hand, if someone wants to squeeze every ounce of life out of their time on this planet, they should have the right to do that.
But to have that decision made by nothing more than poor planning is just wrong.
If the Quebec government had an adequate plan for palliative care – especially one that is 60 per cent of the way through its expected timeframe – we wouldn’t have doctor shortages in that field and a glut of patients opting for medically-assisted dying.
Just chalk this up as another example of the Quebec healthcare system falling short.
Chris Lowrey
