Assisted dying to be available from Monday

• Published date: 06 November 2021

Assisted dying becomes legally available in New Zealand from Monday, but few further details are available on how the service will function in the South.

The Ministry of Health has spent the past year finalising the system approved by voters in a referendum at the last election, one designed with a range of checks and balances to ensure it is not misused.

Each patient who seeks to use the service is to be assigned an attending medical practitioner as their primary carer. By last week, 96 doctors nationwide had expressed interest.

Of those, a third are based in the South Island.

Nationwide, eight nurse practitioners and 93 clinicians are willing to do second assessments, and 13 psychiatrists will also assess patients if requested.

That list of clinicians is compiled and maintained by Support and Consultation for End of Life in New Zealand (SCENZ) for the ministry, but specific questions about how many clinicians had agreed to take part in Otago and Southland were not answered.

"Whilst there is a good spread of practitioners across the country, not every location may have a practitioner available to provide assisted dying services," ministry chief clinical adviser Kristin Good said.

"Therefore, practitioners who need to travel to provide assisted dying services to people will be funded to do so . . . we expect this service to be provided mainly by general practitioners and primary care in Otago."

The ministry had earlier canvassed all clinicians for expressions of interest in taking part in the system, and 129 people had accessed full training and more than 6000 had completed a training module available for all health professionals, Dr Good said.

Primary health organisation WellSouth's medical director, Carol Atmore, said the PHO was not getting involved in the assisted dying system, but would post information on its internal health pathways site for clinicians to access.

"The list of available practitioners will be available through SCENZ, but to be honest I'm not actually sure what level of engagement from practitioners there has been from clinicians in Otago and Southland."

As the subject was one which by law clinicians were not able to raise with patients, it was likely some GPs would...