Improving Palliative Care and Medical Assistance in Dying Practice in Canada: How Patients-Partners Could Contribute to Continuing Medical Education

Abstract

Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is still considered an evolving practice in Canada. Practitioners are facing the challenge of staying up to date and hence need efficient continuing medical education (CME). A patient-partner has been recently invited as a keynote speaker to CME activities in Canada to share her perspectives and views about patient engagement in palliative care and MAiD practice, calling for compassion. To our knowledge, few data exist on patient-partners' contribution to CME on these topics. Based on that experience, we discuss different issues on patient engagement's contribution in such CME events and call for further research.

Keywords

• continuing medical education
• Medical Assistance in Dying
• palliative care
• patient engagement
• psychological suffering