What you need to know about assisted death

Kate Reed, Director of the ACT's Voluntary Assisted Dying Taskforce, explains the process.

Transcript

00:00You have to be over 18 years of age, you have to have lived in the ACT for the past 12 months

00:06or have a substantial connection and therefore be able to get a residency exemption to go through

00:11an ACT process. You have to have a condition or conditions that are advanced and progressive

00:17and that will cause the end of your life, therefore that person's death. They also have to be

00:23experiencing intolerable suffering because of those old conditions and they have to have

00:31decision-making capacity in relation to voluntary assisted dying from the beginning to the end of

00:36the process and all the bits in between, as well as asking for voluntary assisted dying voluntarily

00:42and without coercion. Once we get to a final assessment and where all the checks have been

00:49done by that coordinating practitioner, then a decision is made. So the person will decide

00:56whether they want to do self-administration or they would like to do practitioner administration

01:01of the substance. The difference between the two ways of having the substance is in a self-administration,

01:09the person is able to take the medication themselves. So they'll be able to drink it or they might

01:16be able to be put it into a feeding tube if that's the way that they would normally consume a medicine

01:23or any other oral fluids. If they are unable to do that or there's other clinical reasons that they

01:30can't do that or they have a preference to have practitioner administration, they can get help with

01:36having the oral or the enteral, which is the feeding tube, that way of doing it or they can have it

01:45intravenously. The authorised voluntary assisted dying practitioners are made up of medical

01:52practitioners, nurse practitioners and registered nurses who have all gone through the same mandatory

01:58training and they will be accessible through the voluntary assisted dying care navigator service and

02:05anyone could call that phone number to find out some more information 5124 1 8888.

02:15more information about their families.

02:22And the last thing I can see is the return of the insurance and it will be accessible to us as

02:24a child.

02:29In the next week, I spent the insurance company with the insurance company with the insurance company

02:34from the insurance company.

02:37And I was just watching the insurance company with the insurance company with the insurance company.