In Newfoundland, a handful of practitioners are taking on skyrocketing MAID requests – CTV
Nov. 9, 2023
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – The same handful of doctors and nurse practitioners who helped introduce medically assisted death to Newfoundland and Labrador are handling the majority of a steadily increasing number of requests for the service — and they say they can no longer do it alone.
Applications for medically assisted death in the province are increasing year over year, outpacing the number of health-care workers available to assess those requests, said Dr. Aaron McKim, a family physician and the provincial health authority’s chief of medical assistance in dying, or MAID.
“Last year was the first year we hit the wall, where a number of the practitioners who were our staunch go-tos came back and said, ‘I can’t do this for a while, I need to take a break,”‘ McKim said in a recent interview. “So we were getting requests for MAID, and we were having to tell people that we don’t have anybody to be their MAID practitioner.”
