Project Description
How Canadians feel about end-of-life care
At the end of life Canadians seek many different options.
Regardless, the majority of Canadians want to die at home. Despite this, nearly 70% of deaths occur in hospital. Governments must place high priority on strengthening palliative care options at home and in palliative care settings and on alleviating the burden on family caregivers.
Some Canadians afflicted with terminal illnesses, have sought to die with medical assistance. In response to these wishes, the federal government has developed important legislation around the right to seek and obtain medical assistance in dying (MAID). More needs to be done to support patients seeking this option.
Patients Canada wants to achieve for MAID:
- Equal, free, and transparent access
- Autonomous, ethical, objective, and professionally supported process and procedures for making decisions on applications
- Clear communications of MAID services as part of health care services
- Protection from inappropriate interference in the individual’s decision-making
- Autonomous and easily accessible process for decisions in complex cases
- Advanced directives while the patient is still of sound mind
- Policies that fulfill the patient’s wishes though they are no longer able to make the decision nor act on their own behalf
Patients Canada wants to achieve for palliative care:
- More community hospice capacity
- More community palliative care
- Better coordination of home care services for palliative care patients
Patient Stories
End-of-life care at home, with dignity (patient story)
This is where he wanted to be… at home. His wish was always to be at home when he died. His experience in hospitals over the years were sometimes not good. We were blessed with another 19 months together at home. We were given the support of a hospice and had privileges such as a visiting physician when needed, and all other needs during that time.
We did whatever he was able to do with the comfort of knowing that a personal doctor was available anytime should we need him. When his situation became worse, he had oxygen and anything else he needed. His last night, he was in his chair watching TV and I knew he had experienced a lot of heart pain that day, but he never took any medication for the pain, even though it was available to him. He was a strong, brave man who accepted his illness and did his best to live as best he could.
He died that evening while watching TV, in his chair, just as he had wished. I had all the instructions from the hospice as to what steps to take when this happened and this is why my husband died, with dignity, at home. No ambulance, no hospital, no expense to the system. A doctor from the hospice came and then the funeral representatives came (in the middle of the night) and took him to the funeral home. We planned it this way and the system worked for us only because of the hospice and the fact that we were referred to them by some very kind health care workers at the renal clinic, of which he had been a patient for many years. He had many good, caring doctors over the years who dealt with each of his problems but without my help to guide this care, he would never have been able to administer his medicines, nor follow instructions from so many different doctors he had needed over this long period of time.
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