Stefanie Green

Last updated
Stefanie Green
Born
Nova Scotia, Canada
Alma mater
  • University of Toronto
  • McGill University
OccupationPhysician
Medical career
Institutions
  • Herzl Family Practice Centre, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal
  • Wellesley Hospital
  • St. Michael's Hospital
  • McGill University
  • University of Toronto
  • University of British Columbia
  • University of Victoria
Sub-specialties
  • Family Medicine
  • Palliative Care
  • Maternal and Neonatal Health
  • Assisted Dying
Website www.stefaniegreen.com

Stefanie Green is a Canadian physician known for her contributions to the field of assisted dying.

Contents

Education and career

Green grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada, and pursued her education with undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, followed by medical school at McGill University in Montreal. She completed her residency in Family Medicine at McGill University and further specialized through partial fellowships in palliative care and infant and maternal health. Her academic journey continued as Clinical Faculty at McGill University, where she was based at the Herzl Family Practice Centre in the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. She later relocated to Toronto, affiliating with the University of Toronto while working as a teaching clinician associated with Wellesley Hospital, followed by St. Michael's Hospital. In 2002, she relocated once more to Victoria, British Columbia and continued her work as an academic clinician associated with both the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria. Green worked as a family practitioner with a particular focus on maternity and newborn care.

In 2016, Green shifted her primary focus to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in British Columbia, Canada. She played a pivotal role in founding the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP), [1] becoming its founding president, from 2016–2023. Under her guidance, CAMAP grew from a grassroots organization of colleagues looking for support in a new field of care to a national professional organization of subject matter experts on assisted dying, providing ongoing education, training, guidance documents, and peer support. It achieved charitable status in 2021.

Accomplishments and recognition

Green has published scholarly articles on assisted dying [2] [3] [4] and has been featured in numerous publications on the topic. [5] [6] [7] Since 2021, Green has also co-led the Canadian MAiD Curriculum Project, [8] an ongoing, multi-year, federally-funded, bilingual national MAiD training program.

Green published her first book, This is Assisted Dying: A Doctor’s Story of Empowering Patients at the End of Life in 2022. [9] It is currently available in 6 countries (Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Poland) and 3 languages (English, Polish, Korean).

Green serves as a Medical Advisor to the BC MAiD Oversight and Advisory Committee, [10] contributing her expertise to inform the assisted dying program and end-of-life healthcare in British Columbia. Green is a national and international speaker on the topic of assisted dying, [11] [12] [13] [14] and she has been featured on the TEDx platform with her talk "The Truth About Assisted Dying." [15]

Green's dedication to compassionate end-of-life care options and her fundamental role in establishing CAMAP highlight her expertise in the field of assisted dying. She has received international recognition for her advocacy and respect for patient autonomy. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assisted suicide</span> Suicide undertaken with aid from another person

Assisted suicide – alternately referred to as medical aid in dying – means a procedure in which people take medications to end their own lives with the help of others, usually medical professionals. The term usually refers to physician-assisted suicide (PAS), which is an end of life measure for a person suffering a painful, terminal illness. Once it is determined that the person's situation qualifies under the physician-assisted suicide laws for that location, the physician's assistance is usually limited to writing a prescription for a lethal dose of drugs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advance healthcare directive</span> Legal document

An advance healthcare directive, also known as living will, personal directive, advance directive, medical directive or advance decision, is a legal document in which a person specifies what actions should be taken for their health if they are no longer able to make decisions for themselves because of illness or incapacity. In the U.S. it has a legal status in itself, whereas in some countries it is legally persuasive without being a legal document.

Palliative care is an interdisciplinary medical caregiving approach aimed at optimizing quality of life and mitigating suffering among people with serious, complex, and often terminal illnesses. Within the published literature, many definitions of palliative care exist. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes palliative care as "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual". In the past, palliative care was a disease specific approach, but today the WHO takes a broader patient-centered approach that suggests that the principles of palliative care should be applied as early as possible to any chronic and ultimately fatal illness. This shift was important because if a disease-oriented approach is followed, the needs and preferences of the patient are not fully met and aspects of care, such as pain, quality of life, and social support, as well as spiritual and emotional needs, fail to be addressed. Rather, a patient-centered model prioritizes relief of suffering and tailors care to increase the quality of life for terminally ill patients.

The right to die is a concept based on the opinion that human beings are entitled to end their life or undergo voluntary euthanasia. Possession of this right is often understood that a person with a terminal illness, incurable pain, or without the will to continue living, should be allowed to end their own life, use assisted suicide, or to decline life-prolonging treatment. The question of who, if anyone, may be empowered to make this decision is often the subject of debate.

Sue Rodriguez was a Canadian right-to-die activist. In August 1991, she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and was given two to five years to live. She ultimately made the decision to end her life and she sought the assistance of a doctor to that end, leading to a legal battle. She lost her case in front of the Supreme Court of Canada, but took her own life with the help of an anonymous doctor on February 12, 1994. She is cited as an important figure in the eventual legalization of medical assistance in dying in Canada.

Terminal illness or end-stage disease is a disease that cannot be cured or adequately treated and is expected to result in the death of the patient. This term is more commonly used for progressive diseases such as cancer, dementia or advanced heart disease than for injury. In popular use, it indicates a disease that will progress until death with near absolute certainty, regardless of treatment. A patient who has such an illness may be referred to as a terminal patient, terminally ill or simply as being terminal. There is no standardized life expectancy for a patient to be considered terminal, although it is generally months or less. Life expectancy for terminal patients is a rough estimate given by the physician based on previous data and does not always reflect true longevity. An illness which is lifelong but not fatal is a chronic condition.

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References

  1. ↑ "CAMAP – Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers".
  2. ↑ "For people with dementia, changes in MAiD law offer new hope".
  3. ↑ Wiebe, Ellen; Green, Stefanie; Wiebe, Kim (2021). "Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada: Practical aspects for healthcare teams". Annals of Palliative Medicine. 10 (3): 3586–3593. doi: 10.21037/apm-19-631 . PMID   32787380.
  4. ↑ Downar, James; Green, Stefanie; Radhakrishnan, Arun; Wales, Joshua; Kim, George; Seccareccia, Dori; Wiebe, Kim; Myers, Jeff; Kawaguchi, Sarah (2018). "An entrustable professional activity descriptor for medical aid in dying: A mixed-methods study". CMAJ Open. 6 (4): E657–E663. doi:10.9778/cmajo.20180104. PMC   6303181 . PMID   30578274.
  5. ↑ Porter, Catherine (25 May 2017). "At His Own Wake, Celebrating Life and the Gift of Death". The New York Times.
  6. ↑ "Doctor of MAID: New memoir tells story of Island pioneer in assisted dying". 27 March 2022.
  7. ↑ "Medically assisted dying: Ex-BC maternity doctor helps terminally ill | Vancouver Sun".
  8. ↑ "Curriculum – CAMAP".
  9. ↑ Green, Stefanie (29 March 2022). This is Assisted Dying. Simon and Schuster. ISBN   9781982129460.
  10. ↑ "Patient Representative, Medical Assistance in Dying Oversight Advisory Committee".
  11. ↑ "W5: A rare and intimate look into medical assistance in dying in Canada". YouTube .
  12. ↑ "Canadians need to get better at talking about death, says pioneer in medically assisted dying". CBC. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  13. ↑ "BBC World Service - HARDtalk, Stefanie Green: The ethics of assisted dying".
  14. ↑ "A fact-checked debate about euthanasia in Canada". YouTube .
  15. ↑ "The truth about assisted dying | Dr. Stefanie Green | TEDxSurrey". YouTube .
  16. ↑ "WFRTDS Awards 2018 presented in Cape Town South Africa - the World Federation of Right to die Societies". 7 September 2018.

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