EPC-USA's Broad Coalition Participated in the American Academy of Family Physicians conference.

Colleen E. Barry

The cost to attend medical conferences is prohibitive. Consider donating to the EPC - USA (Donation Link).

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) FUTURE conference held from July 31 - August 2 in brought together medical students and residents from across the nation with family medicine leaders, residency programs and potential employers for three days of family medicine exploration + celebration." Event. Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) - USA had an Honor and opportunity to participate in the "AAFPFUTURE" Conference. 

Part of EPC-USAs' goals are to educate the public along with professionals on issues related to euthanasia, assisted suicide and their effect on society. We provided educational materials, discussions. Assisted Suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer. EPC-USA recognizes that Doctors are the original opponents of assisted suicide.

EPC-USA was grateful with the many discussions as well as a great amount of basic information given to participants, including resources and follow up material from Dr. Sharon Quick, President of "Physicians for Compassionate Care educational Foundation". Dr. Quick has expressed that: 

“A death request is often a plea for help, but legalizing assisted suicide may allow an option to die to transform into a duty to die.”

EPC-USA was able to educate Medical Students and a broad coalition of doctors, medical professionals and attorneys about people who have experienced the direct threat of assisted suicide against themselves or a family member. EPC-USA shared the history of Disability groups such as Not Dead Yet, Second Thoughts and DREDF (Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund), just to name a few who have been at the fore front to stop assisted suicide. 

A monumental past leader of DREDF, Marilyn Golden stated: 

“If these bills pass, some people’s lives will be ended without their consent, through mistakes and abuse.” “No safeguards have ever been enacted or proposed that can prevent this outcome, which can never be undone.”

EPC-USA was able too share the many successes when state coalitions encompassing a broad variety of individuals and groups led their state legislators to understand their concern and opposition to assisted suicide. 

One of EPC-USA’s missions is to combat the growing acceptance of assisted suicide through advocacy and education. The broad variety of individuals and groups includes progressive's as well as conservatives, includes a disability and human justice-based movement to prevent the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia and to end these practices where they exist. Assisted suicide cuts to the heart of what kind of society we want to live in.

Discussions with conference participants included physicians explaining that their care of patients, must establish a physician-patient relationship based on mutual trust and respect to be able to render the best care to their patients. Not assisted suicide. 

Many Medical students and residents were very appreciative to see EPC-USA's booth and expressed the concerns that they have with assisted suicide. These medical students expressed their goal of caring for many patients throughout their lives, extending through to their last days of life.

There were residents, medical students and physicians that were surprised to see our booth and expressed confusion. It was a great opportunity for EPC-USA to share basic information, discussion and provide resources from others doctors that have actively taken a stand to help society realize the problems with assisted suicide. These doctors explain that assisted suicide is Not a Therapy or a Solution.

EPC-USA professionals in attendance were so successful that we ran out of educational material and resources including a the story of a doctor working with a patient that qualified for assisted suicide. The doctor knew that the patient was caught up in the hype of the newly passed assisted suicide law in Oregon and was depressed by a new prognosis. The doctor guided the patient out of out the depression. The patient is still alive and well today. EPC-USA also ran out of educational material on a list of coercion and complications cases that is provided by a disability rights group.

Assisted Suicide is not a type of medical treatment. And affects the nature of medical treatment in our society.

Our table at the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) FUTURE conference was an incredible success.

The cost to attend medical conferences is prohibitive. Donate to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) - USA (Donation Link).

Colleen Barry is a nurse and the Chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) - USA

Physicians group urges New York Governor to veto assisted suicide bill.

Dear Governor Hochul,

My name is Dr Sharon Quick and I am President of Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF), an organization without religious or political affiliation that advocates for the vulnerable at end of life. I have expertise in pediatric anesthesia, critical care, and medical ethics. We oppose A 136. Please veto this poorly constructed bill.

Summary: A 136, like other medically-assisted suicide laws, inevitably violates (rather than upholds) patient autonomy; creates (based on subjective, often inaccurate, criteria) a class of marginalized patients with the disability of terminal illness from whom the standard of medical care can be withheld; allows lethal drugs to unnecessarily substitute for good palliative care and pain control; disproportionately preys on those with mental health problems and disabilities; and destroys the foundation of medical ethics, creating distrust among patients and the health care profession. In addition, A 136 is the most radical policy in the country because it has no waiting period for obtaining lethal drugs. It also has no residency requirement which could turn New York into an international assisted suicide tourism destination for one-stop lethal drug prescriptions. Will New York citizens have to pay for funerals and/or transport of bodies back to their home states and countries? The bill makes no provision for the fact that out-of-state citizens or non-citizens may be pressured to take lethal drugs immediately and they are not required to make funeral and burial arrangements.

1. Pain should never be a reason to seek lethal drugs. Complaints of excessive symptoms indicate doctors lack palliative care knowledge, such as when to refer to pain management specialists. Lethal drugs should never be a solution for lack of education. In addition, those in significant pain lack capacity to consent for lethal drugs. Instead, improve palliative care access and expertise, which has been assessed as likely insufficient to meet the needs of New York.1 There is evidence that minorities, the uninsured, those on Medicaid, and those living in disadvantaged communities may encounter barriers to receiving palliative care.2 It would be a tragedy for these under served populations if this legislation made lethal prescriptions more accessible than palliative care.

2. This bill has no waiting period to obtain lethal drugs; no other law is so rash. Immediate death does not give adequate time for appropriate discussion and interventions for vulnerable patients who make rash decisions out of fear, depression, embarrassment, subtle pressure by a tired caregiver who makes them feel like a burden, or other reversible or transient concerns. Such patients often change their minds and no longer want to hasten death.

3. Physicians may be wrong about a patient’s prognosis, and they often miss depression and compromised decision-making capacity. Patients in WA and OR have died up to 5 years beyond their original “terminal” diagnosis and receipt of lethal drugs. Neither mental health status nor capacity are required to be assessed immediately before a patient ingests lethal drugs, which could be years after initial assessment; there is no guarantee that patients are not compromised at that time.

4. Lethal drugs are not a proportionate means of achieving palliative care goals but devalue vulnerable patients in a way that violates the very goals palliative care aims to achieve. Assisted suicide is abandonment, not health care, and is not part of palliative medicine. Lethal cocktails are bitter-tasting, sometimes mouth-burning liquids, and patients must ice their mouths with popsicles and take anti-emetics just to get them down. Risks include nausea, vomiting, aspiration, seizures, and not dying. Palliative care can do far better.

5. Lethal drug prescriptions undermine autonomy and discriminate against the disability community. Requests for lethal drugs are not primarily for pain but because of depression and/or psychological responses to disabilities developed during terminal illness--which is itself a disability by both social security and ADA criteria. This bill grants new choices and power to doctors, not patients, allowing them to treat patients unequally, subjectively placing them into either (1) a protected group (getting standard mental health care) or (2) a marginalized group with the disability of terminal illness (who can be abandoned to lethal drugs). This discriminates against the disability community and undermines autonomy by violating equality of persons. New York does not need a two-tiered health system that devalues those with the disability of terminal illness.

6. The slippery slope is real. Patients with depression and those with non-terminal diagnoses of anorexia, hernia, arthritis, and “medical complications” have received lethal drugs. Hundreds of doctors’ and patients’ consent forms are missing in Washington and Colorado.

a. In 2023, Oregonian Cody Sontag decided to avoid advanced dementia by killing herself via voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (called VSED). An Oregon doctor declared her “terminally ill” due to dehydration from VSED. He waived the waiting period, prescribed lethal drugs immediately, and Cody died from them.(3) Dehydration is not “incurable” or “irreversible,” as legally required. How many others with non-terminal diagnoses have used VSED to access lethal drugs? No one—least of all physicians whom the vulnerable must be able to trust—should be granted god-like powers to decide which disabilities make life worthless, prey on those who lack capacity, and assist with termination of those so judged.

7. There is no mechanism to enforce the law or detect abuse, which is perhaps why no sanctions have been reported. The design of this bill, like other assisted suicide laws, is a set-up for undetected elder abuse, coercion, or murder, given neither capacity re-evaluation nor the presence a neutral party are required when patients ingest lethal drugs (sometimes weeks, months, or years after initial evaluation).

8. Doctors often devalue those with disabilities. Protect the medical profession from acting on that bias by not granting them power to assist the suicides of patients disabled by terminal illness—especially a bill that has no more oversight than Oregon, where physicians are not disciplined for ending the lives of those with non-terminal illness (like Cody).

9. Protect the medical profession from distrust, both between patients and their doctors and among doctors. Patients in the northwest who are opposed to assisted suicide now have legitimate fears that doctors might overlook depression or compromised capacity, devalue them, and prescribe lethal drugs if they request hastened death while depressed or in a moment of vulnerable weakness. A death request is often a plea for help, and people often change their minds about hastening death with time, treatment, and support. Dr. Bentz lost trust in colleagues after referring a patient to an oncologist who, over Dr. Bentz’ objections, gave lethal drugs to his patient instead of treating his depression.

10. This bill contains potential conscience violations for physicians and health care employers:

a. Requires falsifying the death certificate, naming the underlying disease as the cause, rather than the actual cause of death—lethal drugs (p. 12, lines 12-14)

b. It is unclear whether an objecting health care employer can prohibit physician employees from providing information about lethal drug provision or referring patients for them, or whether objecting physicians could be forced to inform or refer for this process, both of which would violate their conscience for participation in an unethical practice that is not medical care.

11. Finally, participants do not need to be New York residents, which may allow persons out-of-state (or country) to obtain lethal drugs. These patients may not receive adequate evaluation, especially of capacity and lack of coercion, by New York physicians who may not know them well. Non-residents would be pressured to take the lethal drugs immediately in New York to avoid legal complications from ingestion in their home state/country, when many patients hold on to the drugs for weeks, months, and even years, and some never take them. New York may become an international assisted suicide tourism destination.

Please veto A 136. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Sincerely,
Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF)

P.O. Box 7122 Bonney Lake WA 98491 Tel: 253-501-7011 or info@pccef.org, www.pccef.org

1. CAPC. Palliative Care in New York. 2025. (Link)
2. Chambers B. How to Increase Awareness and Reduce Gaps in Palliative Care for MinoritiesJuly 9, 2020. (Link) (accessed 9-22-2024).
3. Pope TM, Brodoff L. Medical aid in dying to avoid late-stage dementia. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2024: 1-7. (Link).

Testimony of Dr Sharon Quick: In opposition to New York assisted suicide bill.

Testimony of Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)

President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education (PCCEF)

In opposition to New York A 136 June 8, 2024

I am President of Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF), an organization without religious or political affiliation that advocates for the vulnerable at end of life. I have expertise in pediatric anesthesia, critical care, and medical ethics. We oppose A 136.

Summary: A 136, like other medically-assisted suicide laws, inevitably violates (rather than upholds) patient autonomy; creates (based on subjective, often inaccurate, criteria) a class of marginalized patients with the disability of terminal illness from whom the standard of medical care can be withheld; allows lethal drugs to unnecessarily substitute for good palliative care and pain control; disproportionately preys on those with mental health problems and disabilities; and destroys the foundation of medical ethics, creating distrust among patients and the health care profession. In addition, A 136 is the most radical policy in the country because it has no waiting period for obtaining lethal drugs.

1. Pain should never be a reason to seek lethal drugs. Complaints of excessive symptoms indicate doctors lack palliative care knowledge, such as when to refer to pain management specialists. Lethal drugs should never be a solution for lack of education. In addition, those in significant pain lack capacity to consent for lethal drugs. Instead, improve palliative care access and expertise, which has been assessed as likely insufficient to meet the needs of New York.(1) There is evidence that minorities, the uninsured, those on Medicaid, and those living in disadvantaged communities may encounter barriers to receiving palliative care.(2) It would be a tragedy for these under served populations if this legislation made lethal prescriptions more accessible than palliative care.

2. This bill has no waiting period to obtain lethal drugs; no other law is so rash. Immediate death does not give adequate time for appropriate discussion and interventions for vulnerable patients who make rash decisions out of fear, depression, embarrassment, subtle pressure by a tired caregiver who makes them feel like a burden, or other reversible or transient concerns. Such patients often change their minds and no longer want to hasten death. Terminal illness is highly associated with depression, and suicidal thinking is highest when cancer is first diagnosed and becomes less frequent as time goes on and patients get support.

3. Physicians may be wrong about a patient’s prognosis, and they often miss depression and compromised decision-making capacity. Patients in WA and OR have died up to 5 years beyond their original “terminal” diagnosis and receipt of lethal drugs. Neither mental health status nor capacity are required to be assessed immediately before a patient ingests lethal drugs, which could be years after initial assessment; there is no guarantee that patients are not compromised at that time. 

4. Lethal drugs are not a proportionate means of achieving palliative care goals but devalue vulnerable patients in a way that violates the very goals palliative care aims to achieve. Assisted suicide is abandonment, not health care, and is not part of palliative medicine. Lethal cocktails are bitter-tasting, sometimes mouth-burning liquids, and patients must ice their mouths with popsicles and take anti-emetics just to get them down. Risks include nausea, vomiting, aspiration, seizures, and not dying. Palliative care can do far better.

5. Lethal drug prescriptions undermine autonomy and discriminate against the disability community. Requests for lethal drugs are not primarily for pain but because of concerns of losing autonomy or abilities or feeling like a burden. These may be symptoms of depression and are usually psychological responses to disabilities developed during terminal illness--which is itself a disability by both social security and ADA criteria. This bill grants new choices and power to health practitioners, not patients, allowing them to treat patients unequally, subjectively placing them into either (1) a protected group (getting standard mental health care) or (2) a marginalized group with the disability of terminal illness (who can be abandoned to lethal drugs). This discriminates against the disability community and undermines autonomy by violating equality of persons. New York does not need a two-tiered health system that devalues those with the disability of terminal illness. 

6. The slippery slope is real. Patients with depression and those with non-terminal diagnoses of anorexia, hernia, arthritis, and “medical complications” have received lethal drugs. Hundreds of doctors’ and patients’ consent forms are missing in Washington and Colorado.

a. In 2023, a dementia diagnosis led Cody Sontag to voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (called VSED) to kill herself. An Oregon doctor said dehydration from VSED would soon cause death; he waived the waiting period, prescribed lethal drugs, and Cody died from them.(3) Dehydration is not “incurable” or “irreversible,” as legally required. How many others with non-terminal diagnoses have used VSED to access lethal drugs? No one—least of all physicians whom the vulnerable must be able to trust—should be granted god-like powers to decide which disabilities make life worthless, prey on those who lack capacity, and assist with termination of those so judged.

7. There is no mechanism to enforce the law or detect abuse, which is perhaps why no sanctions have been reported. The design of this bill, like other assisted suicide laws, is a set-up for undetected elder abuse, coercion, or murder, given neither capacity re-evaluation nor the presence a neutral party are required when patients ingest lethal drugs (sometimes weeks, months, or years after initial evaluation).

8. Doctors often devalue those with disabilities. Protect the medical profession from acting on that bias by not granting them power to assist the suicides of patients disabled by terminal illness—especially a law with so little oversight that physicians are not disciplined for ending the lives of those with non-terminal illness (like Cody).

9. Protect the medical profession from distrust, both between patients and their doctors and among doctors. Patients in the northwest who are opposed to assisted suicide now have legitimate fears that doctors might overlook depression or compromised capacity, devalue them, and prescribe lethal drugs if they request hastened death while depressed or in a moment of vulnerable weakness. A death request is often a plea for help, and people often change their minds about hastening death with time, treatment, and support. Dr. Bentz lost trust in colleagues after referring a patient to an oncologist who, over Dr. Bentz’ objections, gave lethal drugs to his patient instead of treating his depression.

10. This bill contains potential conscience violations for physicians and health care employers:

a. Requires falsifying the death certificate, naming the underlying disease as the cause, rather than the actual cause of death—lethal drugs (p. 12, lines 12-14)
b. It is unclear whether an objecting health care employer can prohibit physician employees from providing information about lethal drug provision or referring patients for them, both of which would violate their conscience as participation in an unethical practice that is not medical care.
c. It is unclear whether objecting physicians could be forced to inform or refer for this process in violation of their conscience.

11. Finally, participants do not need to be New York residents, which may allow out-of-state residents to obtain lethal drugs. These participants may not receive adequate evaluation, especially of capacity and lack of coercion, by New York physicians who may not know them well. Because non-residents would be forced to take the lethal drugs in New York, it may pressure patients to take the lethal drugs immediately, when many patients hold on to the drugs for weeks, months, and even years, and some decide never to take them. Given the number of people who travel to New York from around the world, this may make New York an international assisted suicide tourism destination.

Please vote no on A 136. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Sincerely,
Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF)

1. CAPC. Palliative Care in New York. 2025. (Link).
2. Chambers B. How to Increase Awareness and Reduce Gaps in Palliative Care for Minorities July 9, 2020. (Link) (accessed 9-22-2024).
3. Pope TM, Brodoff L. Medical aid in dying to avoid late-stage dementia. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2024: 1-7. (Link).

Physicians for Compassionate Care Testimony against Oregon Assisted Suicide Law expansion bill.

Testimony in opposition to Oregon SB 1003
Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation
Expertise: Pediatric Anesthesiology/Critical Care, Medical Ethics
Senate Rules Committee June 2, 2025

I am Dr. Sharon Quick, President of the Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF), an organization without religious or political affiliation. We advocate for the vulnerable terminally ill, promoting good palliative care. I have expertise in pediatric anesthesiology, critical care, and medical ethics. We oppose SB 1003-A Engrossed. Please see the following reasons for our opposition.

1. Reducing the waiting period to 7 days from 15 days (p. 5, lines 27-31, 40-43) does not allow adequate time to fully assess a patient who may be suffering from complex emotional/mental health/existential problems that can worsen physical pain. Mental health problems and deficits in decision-making capacity are common in the terminally ill but often missed by physicians. This bill devalues vulnerable patients suffering from disabilities—such as mental health problems, lack of capacity, psychological distress over loss of function—that will not be uncovered due to inadequate time for assessment. Nor is there time for patients to change their minds, which they often do.

a. It is unclear why there is a need to reduce the waiting period. No dying patient should have unbearable pain. Such a complaint indicates the clinician lacks knowledge about the management of complex pain—an unawareness that is far too common. Lethal drugs are a poor solution for lack of education of clinicians. Furthermore, patients in significant pain have compromised capacity to choose, invalidating consent for lethal drugs.
b. Lethal drugs do not guarantee a peaceful death; there are many contraindications and side effects to these mouth-burning, experimental concoctions. Palliative care can ensure a peaceful death to a far greater degree than lethal drugs.

2. There are good medical reasons to DISALLOW lethal drugs the closer a patient gets to death, but this bill authorizes the opposite (waiving the waiting period for patients close to death)—and allows this difficult determination by one clinician, without any defined expertise, and without a second opinion. (p. 5, lines 44-45 to p. 6, lines 1-4) PATIENTS WITHIN A WEEK OF DEATH USUALLY HAVE COMPROMISED MENTAL CAPACITY AND INABILITY TO INGEST LIQUIDS, MAKING CONSENT UNLIKELY AND INGESTION DANGEROUS.

3. Shortening and/or eliminating the waiting period provide a mechanism for anyone, whether terminally ill or not, to access lethal drugs through voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED). This is happening in OR, but physicians have not been sanctioned for this abuse.

a. Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) has been used as a “bridge” to prescription of lethal drugs in Oregon. In 2023, Oregon resident Cody Sontag, decided to commit suicide via VSED to prevent her dementia from advancing. On her fifth day of VSED, a physician assessed Cody as “terminally ill” due to dehydration, and a consulting physician concurred through telehealth. The physician determined that Cody would die within 15 days and waived her waiting period; she died by lethal drug ingestion 2 days later. This action is in clear violation of Oregon’s law which defines terminal illness as an “incurable and irreversible disease.” Dehydration is neither incurable nor irreversible, nor is it a “disease.” Additionally, dehydration reduces cognition, and this is worsened by a baseline of dementia; it is unlikely that Cody had sufficient decision-making capacity to make her consent valid. VSED could potentially be used in this way for any adult for any reason. In 2024, 179 patients (29% of those who received lethal drug prescriptions) had their waiting periods waived. How many of these patients had an induced “bridge” to lethal prescriptions like Cody? No one, including physicians, should be granted god-like powers to decide which disabilities make life worthless and to assist with termination of those so judged.

4. The bill removes the requirement for the second opinion to include evaluating patient capacity, absence of coercion, and a fully informed decision. (p. 3, lines 42-43; p. 4, lines 35-40) These are potentially more difficult assessments than determining the presence of a terminal disease, and a second opinion should be mandatory for those assessments.

5. Requiring health care facilities and hospice programs to publicly disclose their positions on participation in assisted suicide may be a conscience violation. Assisted suicide is not considered a medical procedure but unethical patient abandonment by most physicians and health care practitioners in the world. Requiring health care facilities or programs to make statements about their degree of involvement with it has the effect of making those facilities appear to agree that assisted suicide is a medical practice, even when they do not agree that it is. This is a conscience violation.

6. Changing the word “physician” to “practitioner” is confusing and unnecessary if only physicians are allowed to prescribe lethal drugs. The obvious reason for this word change is to set the stage to allow non-physicians, such as nurse practitioners or physician assistants to prescribe lethal drugs by a simple definition change of “practitioner” in line 42 on page 2 (p. 2, Sec. 3, lines 8-9, 15-17, 42). Vulnerable patients wanting to hasten death with lethal drugs risk their lives on the decisions made--they deserve the highest level of expertise from physicians. Reasons to not open the door to non-physicians:

a. Proponents have stated that rural areas lack physicians willing to prescribe lethal drugs, and advocate allowing non-physicians to participate to expand access in these areas. However, both rural access to palliative care and the number of palliative care prescribers are estimated to be insufficient to meet Oregon’s needs.1 It is a disservice to patients to potentially make lethal drugs more accessible than palliative care.
b. Medicare requires that a physician, not other types of clinicians, certify that a patient is terminally ill for hospice admission.
    i. Although physicians are frequently wrong about a 6-months prognosis, there is evidence that physicians are more accurate than nurses in prognoses.
    ii. Physicians often miss depression2 and deficits in decision-making capacity3; those with lesser qualifications should not make such judgments.
    iii. The training of physician assistants (PAs) is insufficient in end-of-life care, evaluating a patient’s decision-making capacity, determining prognosis for terminal illness, or deciding that death is imminent.4

7. Given the current abuse of Oregon’s law, allowing it to function as a mechanism for termination of people who may not be terminally ill or may be under coercion, please oppose SB 1003, which drops further safeguards. Instead, perhaps further safeguards and better oversight need to be put in place.

a. VSED, as described in #3 above, is being used as a way for non-terminally ill patients to obtain lethal drug prescriptions.
b. In Oregon, patients are getting lethal prescriptions for diagnoses of anorexia, hernia, and arthritis (Oregon 2021 Data Summary, p. 14, footnote 3)—diagnoses that are not terminal by themselves—but there is no process for challenging physician actions. Oregon, California, and Colorado have unethically provided lethal drugs to patients with eating disorders.
c. Thomas Middleton, a terminally ill Oregon resident, moved in with the trustee of his estate and then died by physician-assisted suicide in 2008. The trustee sold his house and deposited the money in her account; she was arrested on theft and criminal mistreatment charges, but whether physicians had inappropriately prescribed lethal drugs (by not properly investigating coercion) was never investigated.

NOTES
1. Only 40% of rural and 32% of suburban areas have access to hospital-based palliative care—numbers which are below both the national and Pacific region averages. (Link)
2. Oregon patients with depression have died from lethal prescriptions. Ganzini, L., E. R. Goy, and S. K. Dobscha. "Prevalence of Depression and Anxiety in Patients Requesting Physicians' Aid in Dying: Cross Sectional Survey." Bmj 337 (2008): a1682.
3. One study found that about 90% of cancer patients had deficits on some subscale of decision-making capacity, but the majority of physicians missed these deficits. Kolva, E., B. Rosenfeld, and R. Saracino. "Assessing the Decision-Making Capacity of Terminally Ill Patients with Cancer." Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 26, no. 5 (May 2018): 523-531. (Link).
4. As of 2023 only 227 PAs (0.2%) in the nation had specialty training in hospice and palliative care. This bill does not distinguish between PAs with experience/expertise and those without. (Link), p. 6