When medical assistance in death became law in Canada last June, Dr. Brock Wright, Chief Medical Officer with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, was tasked with putting a provincial team of medical professionals together.  He explains how that was done. 

“We went to a number of organizations in Manitoba and asked them to go out to their members and help us identify individuals in those various professions who might be interested in participating in a medical assistance in dying team.  People contacted us             and based on that we put a team together.”

Increased demand for medical assistance in dying has resulted in an expansion of the provincial MAID team.  Dr. Wright shares how it has grown.

“We started off with three part-time physicians, two nurses, two social workers and two pharmacists.   Since then the interest in the service has increased substantially and so we’ve expanded the team to include seven physicians, three social workers and we still have two pharmacists, two nurses and we’ve added a speech-language pathologist.”

To date 109 individuals have contacted the program, with 25 receiving assistance.   Twenty-eight people died unassisted, 17 are currently being assessed, 19 cases were declined and 20 were inquiries only. 

For more on medical assistance in dying and the legislation that permits it, listen to Thompson Today for the first of a two-part interview with Dr. Wright this afternoon.