{
  "abstract": "Hospice/palliative care aims to minimise suffering and optimise functional independence for as long as possible without shortening or prolonging life. Clinically this includes informed patients and their families making shared decisions about not initiating or withdrawing therapies.Euthanasia (however delivered) aims to provide a pain-free and finite end to life at a specific time. As data from the increasing number of jurisdictions that have legislated this become available, key insights emerge: this is a very individual decision (perhaps influenced by the generation in which a person is born); a proportion of people facing a life-limiting illness want the option of euthanasia even if they do not use it; and many of the societal outcomes are yet to be evaluated.When we think about hospice/palliative care and euthanasia, what does the Venn diagram look like? You can have hospice/palliative care without euthanasia but you cannot have euthanasia without substantial investments in palliative care.Both deal with people who have life-limiting illnesses; both focus on patient-centred goals; both in their own ways address suffering.There are tensions: Many people fear that the medications used in palliative care may shorten people’s lives, especially with escalating doses (with available evidence suggesting that this is not the case); In some jurisdictions, euthanasia may be tolerated in people who do not have a current request, undermining that person’s autonomy.Both approaches already co-exist in the same social and health systems. Hospice/palliative care services can create processes and structures that accommodate legislated approaches to euthanasia.Globally, we have a very large natural experiment unfolding and we need to continue to learn and understand the positive and negative impacts of euthanasia while palliative care is still in its relative infancy.Two coins in the same pocket seems nearer to the mark.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Flinders University, Australia"
      ],
      "name": "David Currow"
    }
  ],
  "title": "S4-3 Assisted dying (euthanasia, VAD, MAID) and palliative care: two sides of the same coin?",
  "uid": "873ad6ac-d12e-50f7-8ed2-b990b52cdd4d"
}