Nov. 20, 2023
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – For the past year, Ellen Gretsinger, a nurse practitioner in Ontario’s Niagara region, has been providing patients with medically assisted deaths — and not getting paid for it.
She has a full-time nursing job and a side gig offering virtual care, and in the evenings and on weekends, assesses patients for medical assistance in dying — known as MAID — and delivers the procedure.
Like many provinces, Ontario does not have a mechanism for nurse practitioners to take on independent work and be paid for it, like a fee-for-service structure often in place for doctors.
And demand for MAID is growing across the country. So Gretsinger does the work for free. She believes in it, especially after watching her mother suffer before she died of cancer.
“I just feel that when people are suffering, and this is something that they’ve been told that they can access, then access needs to be there,” Gretsinger said in a recent interview. “So that’s why I have decided to do as much as I can.”