Abstract

Herbert, Dilinie How should health professionals respond if a patient nearing the end of life expresses a wish to hasten their death? To answer this question, this article draws upon peer‐reviewed literature, the practices of palliative care, and the experiences of two palliative care physicians, Associate Professor Natasha Michael and Associate Professor Mark Boughey. The expression of a wish to hasten death does not necessarily imply a genuine desire to hasten death or to be helped to die. To the contrary, almost always this means that the patient has been overwhelmed by one or more serious concerns. While inadequate pain relief may be one such factor, more typically these concerns are social and spiritual, such as loneliness, social isolation, feeling oneself to be a burden on others, hopelessness, and fears about the process of dying. If a patient expresses a wish to hasten death, health professionals should therefore discuss with them the reasons for this request, and then devise and effectively communicate an individualised care plan which begins to address these concerns.