The provision of medical assistance in dying: protocol for a scoping review

Abstract

IntroductionMedical assistance in dying (MAID), a term encompassing both euthanasia and assisted suicide, was decriminalised in Canada in 2015. Although Bill C-14 legislated eligibility criteria under which patients could receive MAID, it did not provide guidance regarding the technical aspects of providing an assisted death. Therefore, we propose a scoping review to map the characteristics of the existing medical literature describing the medications, settings, participants and outcomes of MAID, in order to identify knowledge gaps and areas for future research.Methods and analysisWe will search electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, CENTRAL, PsycINFO), clinical trial registries, conference abstracts, and professional guidelines and recommendations from jurisdictions where MAID is legal, up to June 2017. Eligible report types will include technical summaries, institutional policies, practice surveys, practice guidelines and clinical studies. We will include all descriptions of MAID provision (either euthanasia or assisted suicide) in adults who have provided informed consent for MAID, for any reason, including reports where patients have provided consent to MAID in advance of the development of incapacity (eg, dementia). We will exclude reports in which patients receive involuntary euthanasia (eg, capital punishment). Two independent investigators will screen and select retrieved reports using pilot-tested screening and eligibility forms, and collect data using standardised data collection forms. We will summarise extracted data in tabular format with accompanying descriptive statistics and use narrative format to describe their clinical relevance, identify knowledge gaps and suggest topics for future research.Ethics and disseminationThis scoping review will map the range and scope of the existing literature on the provision of MAID in jurisdictions where the practice has been decriminalised. The review will be disseminated through conference presentations and publication in a peer-reviewed journal. These results will be useful to clinicians, policy makers and researchers involved with MAID.

Provision of medical assistance in dying: a scoping review

“…The methods of this scoping review are based on those described in the Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewers Manual 12 and are described in detail in a previously published study protocol. 13 …”

“…The methods of this scoping review are based on those described in the Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewers Manual 12 and are described in detail in a previously published study protocol. 13 eligibility criteria Eligible sources included technical reports, institutional policies, practice surveys, clinical practice guidelines and clinical studies. Opinion pieces/letters were excluded, as were reports solely describing the assessment of patient eligibility for MAID.…”

Canadian French and English newspapers’ portrayals of physicians’ role and medical assistance in dying (MAiD) from 1972 to 2016: a qualitative textual analysis

“…As MAiD in Canada is a new practice that has a small amount of published research,2 39 40 we must examine the information that is available. Given the scarcity of published medical research, Canadian newspapers are a credible data source as journalists have written many stories about MAiD and have been discussing it since 1972.…”

Reframing MAiD in the Media: Rationalizing and Normalizing a New Mode of Dying in Canada

“…The result was the amendment of section 14 of the Criminal Code of Canada with Bill C-14. Bill C-14 legally permits medically assisted death when specific eligibility criteria (which are arguably vague, contentious and subjective as we shall explore in this paper) are met, with safeguards in place to protect vulnerable Canadians from being coerced into an assisted death (Keown 2014;Oczkowski et al 2017;Schafer 2013).…”

“…For this reason, some sources used in this thesis for Canadian attitudes and norms concerning MAiD have come from the media and non-academic sources, two of which(Echlin et al 2015;Somerville 2014) provided oppositional voices, a perspective that is discreet in the mainstream press. The periods temporal to the legalization of assisted death produced a large number of Canadian academic publications dealing with the legal, ethical, medical, operational or political challenges encountered in the offering of MAiD in Canada(Landry et al 2015;Downie and Dembo 2016;Hendry et al 2012;Oczkowski et al…”