More than 40% of GPs have accompanied terminal fasting

Four out of ten family doctors in Switzerland have dealt with at least one patient who refuses all solid or liquid food in order to die, according to a study. Most doctors have a positive approach to the issue.

The Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), in collaboration with the Swiss Medical Association, conducted a representative survey of 750 practising family doctors in Switzerland on the voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED), also called ante-mortem or terminal fasting.

VSED is the act of a person who consciously refuses to eat or drink with the intention of dying. Healthcare professionals are therefore not charged with providing a lethal drug to the patient but rather with caring for and accompanying the patient from the beginning of VSED until her or his death.

The survey found that 81.9% of family physicians knew about VSED and 42.8% had accompanied at least one patient during the process. On average, doctors with experience of VSED had dealt with 11 such cases.

“We didn’t expect such a high number,” says Sabrina Stängle, co-author of the research at ZHAW. She pointed out that Switzerland still lacks a unified practice in this area.

“Family physicians lack sufficient in-depth knowledge to address patients and their relatives in an appropriate manner during the process,” the researchers concluded. “Further training and development of practice recommendations are needed to achieve more standardised accompaniment of VSED”.

Stressful

In any case, 59% of the doctors questioned saw VSED as a natural death process when overseen by a healthcare professional; 32% defined it as equivalent to passive euthanasia, 5% regarded it as suicide, 2% considered it a self-determined end-of-life decision and 1% as an alternative form of dying. One per cent of physicians said they would classify VSED differently depending on the case, which would also be based on the patients’ motives and physical health.

Almost three-quarters of respondents (73%) said this assistance was compatible with their worldview or religion, 58% with their professional ethics; 24% said it contradicted their ethics and 18% were neutral. Those who have already been confronted with it are generally more favourable.

That said, more than half of the respondents said accompanying a person during VSED was stressful.

More

Assisted suicide options set to shrink for Swiss abroad

This content was published on Aug 9, 2020 Aug 9, 2020 Swiss citizens living abroad may in future be rejected by assisted suicide organisation EXIT, the group says.