De Levenseindekliniek: resultaten van het eerste jaar

In 2012 the Dutch Dying with Dignity Society (NVVE) founded the End-of-life Clinic, which provides euthanasia or help with assisted suicide at the request of people whose own doctor will not carry out euthanasia if the legal requirements of due care can been fulfilled. As part of an independent evaluation, we looked at the applications received by the End-of-life Clinic during its first year and at the outcomes of these applications. We wrote an extensive article on this subject which was published in JAMA Internal Medicine. One of the most important outcomes is that the End-of-life Clinic rejected a large percentage of the requests for its services, mainly as these came from people with psychiatric conditions. This means that the fears that some people have concerning the alleged End-of-life Clinic policy ‘you ask, we comply’, appear to be unfounded. On the other hand, the End-of-life Clinic is certainly not the solution for all those people whose requests to their own doctor fall on deaf ears.

Conflict of interest and financial support: for this article: M.C. Snijdewind has received a research grant from the Dutch Dying with Dignity Society. The Dutch Dying with Dignity Society had no influence on the design and execution of the study and has not seen or approved the manuscript in advance.