Photo by Shutr

Last week The Hastings Center released an article on how hospice care is related to Oregon's Death with Dignity law. It's a very compelling study from a think tank that has been a leader in presenting a non-biased view of end-of-life care for over 40 years. The two main findings were "terminally ill patients seeking physician-assisted death are receiving high-quality palliative care," and "hospice programs are regarded as an important societal mechanism to assure that physician-assisted death is practiced responsibly."

These are quite encouraging findings for terminally ill individuals. Pain-relieving palliative care and the support system hospices can offer are very important for terminally ill people if they decide to hasten their death. Even beyond the individual patient, the holistic approach of hospices ensure the entire family has resources to work through this difficult process. Hospice and palliative care are critical pieces of an entire patient-centered model which includes the option of physician-assisted death and lends peace of mind to a dying person and their family.

The tag line in the press release for this thorough study was "most Oregon hospices do not fully participate in the Death with Dignity Act." This sound bite has served them well. They've received a good amount of media about the study and their press release has certainly dominated my Google and Twitter watch-lists the last few days.

But what confuses me about the press release is it doesn't focus on the two main findings of the study. It's understandable many hospices may not allow their employees to be directly involved with a patient's decision to use the Death with Dignity law for legal or moral concerns, but that doesn't preclude these caring workers to support their dying patients to the best of their abilities.

Former Compassion & Choices of Oregon executive director, George Eighmey, a courageous advocate for people using Oregon's Death with Dignity law, summed up his experiences in working with hospices very well:

• In recent years the nonparticipating hospices typically refer their patients who ask for more help using the Death with Dignity law to an organization which will help them through the process.
• Rarely do these hospices ever abandon their patients even if a patient self-administers the medication to complete the Death with Dignity process.
• Very few attend the actual hastening, but after a patient has taken the medication most of these hospice workers return to provide comfort for the family.

At the end of the press release The Hastings Center returns to its non-biased roots by reporting the authors' suggested solution:

for hospices to adopt a position of "studied neutrality," which recognizes a diversity of views among providers and patients about physician-assisted death and encourages open discussion about the issue. "This approach can bring much-needed dialogue and transparency to a process that is unnecessarily opaque, permit hospice programs to acknowledge tensions in their core values, and promote efforts to assure congruence among values, policies, and procedures."

Sadly, this critical analysis was absent from most media reports.