This Is Assisted Dying: A Doctor's Story of Empowering Patients at the End of Life

by Stefanie Green M.D.

Overview

An international bestseller, this compassionate memoir by a leading pioneer in medically assisted dying who helps suffering patients explore and fulfill their end of life choices is “written with sensitivity, grace, and candor...not to be missed” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Dr. Stefanie Green has been forging new paths in the field of medical assistance in dying since 2016. In her landmark memoir, Dr. Green reveals the reasons a patient might seek an assisted death, how the process works, what the event itself can look like, the reactions of those involved, and what it feels like to oversee proceedings and administer medications that hasten death. She describes the extraordinary people she meets and the unusual circumstances she encounters as she navigates the intricacy, intensity, and utter humanity of these powerful interactions.

Deeply authentic and powerfully emotional, This Is Assisted Dying contextualizes the myriad personal, professional, and practical issues surrounding assisted dying by bringing readers into the room with Dr. Green, sharing the voices of her patients, her colleagues, and her own narrative. As our population confronts issues of wellness, integrity, agency, community, and how to live a connected, meaningful life, this progressive and compassionate book by a physician at the forefront of medically assisted dying offers comfort and potential relief.

“A humane, clear-eyed view of how and why one can leave the world by choice” (Kirkus Reviews), This Is Assisted Dying will change the way people think about their options, and ultimately is less about death than about how we wish to live.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982129460
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	03/29/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	300,652
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Stefanie Green spent ten years in general practice and another twelve years working exclusively in maternity and newborn care before changing her focus in 2016 to medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Dr. Green is the cofounder and current President of the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP). She is medical advisor to the BC Ministry of Health MAiD oversight committee, moderator of CAMAP’s national online forum, and has hosted three national conferences on the topic. She is clinical faculty at the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria, and lives in British Columbia with her family. Find out more at StefanieGreen.com.

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/14/2022

Physician Green chronicles in this stunning account her work in the assisted dying field after Canada passed its Medical Assistance in Dying bill in 2016. Through stories of her many patients, she reflects on her work “bringing about death” in Vancouver Island, the area in Canada with “the highest percentage of assisted death.” One woman with advanced metastatic breast cancer, for example, had eating and mobility issues as well as progressive pain, made worse by having watched her mother and two sisters die of cancer before her: “I know what’s coming next and I’d rather skip it,” she concluded. Another man declared, “I want to do it my way. I want to have my friends over... maybe even sneak a sip of a beer.” Much like her patients, Green avoids cloying sentimentality and gets straight at the heart of the matter with compassion and force: “We’re going to talk about death today, and we’re going to talk about dying... I’m going to talk about these things quite frankly,” she tells one patient. Green gives a personal voice to a contentious topic, making a memorable case that death is a “mark of our humanity.” Written with sensitivity, grace, and candor, this is not to be missed. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

2021-12-14
A Canadian physician recounts a still-evolving practice of allowing people to end their own lives with medical help.

In 2016, Canada was ahead of the curve in passing a law that allowed for doctors to assist terminally ill people to choose when and how to die, by which “the fear of an unknown ending is replaced by a semblance of control.” The law had a few gray areas that were later addressed: At what point can it be determined that death is imminent? Can someone who is beset by incurable depression or some other mental disorder be considered a candidate for medically assisted suicide? Green addresses such questions with case studies from her own practice. She also investigates the moral and ethical challenges placed on her and her fellow physicians by the sheer task of determining when a patient qualifies for the application of the law. “It turns out all these emotions go somewhere,” she writes, “and every once in a while, a crack forms in the retaining walls, and the feeling slips out.” Her allowance that doctors are humans, too, is welcome. With a few years of practice in medically assisted suicide, which in Canada is accomplished through the ingestion of lethal drugs by mouth or intravenously, Green has a notion of trends. For example, the number of people who choose that avenue is growing, and it is especially prevalent around the holidays. Even so, she recounts, it’s a small fraction of the number of Canadians who die each year, in part, she suggests, because medically assisted suicide is not widely advertised. Canada bests its southern neighbor in favoring science over religion, but, Green also notes, medically assisted suicide is allowed in several U.S. states, if with somewhat tighter controls, with states requiring “that the patient be terminally ill with a prognosis of six months or less.” Green predicts that these controls will be loosened as more people learn about the option.

A humane, cleareyed view of how and why one can leave the world by choice.

Kirkus Reviews

"Reveals the intimacy, power, and liberation that are made possible when we are allowed to face death head-on."
—Tricycle Magazine

“Stunning... Green gives a personal voice to a contentious topic, making a memorable case that death is a 'mark of our humanity.' Written with sensitivity, grace, and candor, this is not to be missed.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred

“A humane, cleareyed view of how and why one can leave the world by choice.”
—Kirkus

From the Publisher