Hi, and welcome to my first blog post of Semester 2. I have chosen to do an inquiry project this semester and even though I have never done one, I am excited to see how it turns out!
I find the topic is always the hardest part of beginning any project. Whatever I choose to do my inquiry project on will stay with me for the next five months or so. I have thought long and hard about this, and I have decided that my inquiry question will be:
Why do people choose/use Medical Assistance in Dying?
In case you don’t know what Medical Assistance in Dying, it is when a terminally ill patient dies peacefully after professional doctors inject a chemical in their veins. I find this topic very interesting and throughout this semester, I really want to learn about all the different aspects of the whole process of giving a patient Medical Assistance in Dying. One more reason I have decided to write about this topic is because of something that happened to me recently. Unfortunately, on February 12 2022, my grandma passed away using Medical Assistance in Dying. She was considered a terminally ill patient, as she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer over two years ago. The past few months and weeks have been extremely hard for her and she has been feeling nauseous all day, sometimes also leading to nights spent at the hospital. It had been her own choice to die, and what makes it even more heartbreaking was that she actually turned seventy years old on February 12. It had been her wish to live up to seventy, and even one more day after that would have been torture for her. This incident led me to think about what happened to her. What kind of chemical is used? Why do patients choose to die this way? What are the preparations needed to prepare for this? It is these kinds of questions I asked myself that led me to my inquiry question today. I really hope I can interest you all with my inquiry project and hopefully you can take some time to read it as well.
Thanks for reading!
Hi Julie! I am very sorry for your loss. The inquiry is a great question because it can give you an idea of how things happen when doing something like that, and it will give you a chance to learn more. The fact that humans are able to pass away from simply chemicals, and the fact that they can have a choice is truly amazing, I became more intrested to how the process of the medical dying process work, lots of articles and research papers came up, but one caught my eye about the phases, and the steps of this process.
Here is a link for it, if you are interested for the phases feel free to look through it!
https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/hp/maid/if-hp-maid-self-assessment-tool.pdf
Hi Julie! First of all, I’m sorry for your loss.
This is a very intriguing topic, and I’ve done a project similar to your topic, but i was looking more into the legal perspective of it. Here are some guiding questions you can take a look at:
1. Why should it be available for intolerable suffering individuals? why don’t they offer it to everyone and anyone who needs it?
2. What do you think would happen if assisted dying law isn’t legal?
3. How will assisting dying impact the relationship between doctors and patients?
Good luck!
-Ronnie