National survey of medical decisions at end of life made by New Zealand general practitioners
BMJ 2003; 327 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7408.202 (Published 24 July 2003) Cite this as: BMJ 2003;327:202
- Kay Mitchell, research fellow (k.mitchell@auckland.ac.nz)1,
- R Glynn Owens, professor of forensic clinical psychology2
- 1 Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
- 2University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2AS
- Correspondence to: K Mitchell
- Accepted 4 July 2003
Introduction
Several attempts have been made in New Zealand to liberalise laws prohibiting euthanasia. Surveys in other countries where legalisation of euthanasia was being considered have found illegal provision of physician assisted death.1−3 However, none of these studies investigated the availability of palliative care services, which arguably make euthanasia unnecessary.4 We investigated the prevalence of physician assisted death in New Zealand within the context of availability of palliative care services.
Participants, methods, and results
We obtained an English version of the anonymous questionnaire previously used in Dutch and Australian studies1 3 and sent it to 2602 general practitioners. The general practitioners were in a commercially supplied address list, comprising 87% of the general practitioners in New Zealand in 2000. To retain consistency with previous studies, we sought details of medical …