2024-04-01 10:27:30
If the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, recently introduced into the Scottish Parliament were to become law, the involvement of pharmacists would be relatively limited.
Clause 1 of the Bill would make it lawful to provide assistance to a terminally ill adult who requests assistance to end their own life.
Clause 2 defines terminal illness. A person is terminally ill if they have an advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which they are unable to recover and that can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death.
Clauses that follow provide various safeguards, including mental capacity, declarations and assessments by two medical practitioners, one of whom is a “coordinating registered medical practitioner”.
Clause 15(1) states:
- The coordinating registered medical practitioner or a registered medical practitioner or registered nurse may, subject to certain conditions, provide a terminally ill adult with an approved substance with which the adult may end their own life.
- The substance must be “provided” – the Bill does not permit administration.
- The Bill does not permit a pharmacist to provide an approved substance direct to terminally ill adult.
- The Bill defines “approved substance” as “such drug or other substance as is specified by the Scottish Ministers by regulations”.
A pharmacy that held a wholesaled dealer’s licence could provide an approved substance to a medical practitioner if the licence covered the substance in question, but the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 do not permit a wholesale supply to be made to a nurse (though a supply could lawfully be made to a doctor, hospital or clinic that employed the nurse).
If the coordinating medical practitioner or other medical practitioner or nurse think it necessary, they may be accompanied by any other medical practitioner or nurse or by a pharmacist when the substance is provided to the terminally ill person.
The coordinating medical practitioner, or the other medical practitioner or nurse must remain with the terminally ill person until that person decides whether to use the substance to end their own life and, if the terminally ill person does so decide, they must remain until the terminally ill patient had died, although they are not required to be in the same room.
Clause 18 of the Bill provides for conscientious objection and says that an individual is not under any duty to participate in anything that would be authorised by the Act if that individual has a conscientious objection.
Clause 19 says that it is not a crime to lawfully provide a terminally ill person with assistance to end their own life and clause 20 says that providing lawful assistance to a terminally ill person to end their own life does not give rise to any civil liability.