Date/Time
Date(s) - March 2, 2023
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location
DeVries Centre Chapel
Categories No Categories
In June of 2016, medical assistance in dying (MAiD) became legal in Canada. Since then, MAiD has undergone multiple revisions that have expanded its scope and access. Most recently, Canada gained international attention as our government was set to make MAiD available to those individuals whose sole underlining health concern is mental health. This update to MAiD was set to go into effect in March of 2023, but as of December 15, 2022, this has been temporarily delayed.
More than a news headline, MAiD is an increasing ethical challenge for many Canadians. It affects far more than just the patient. From the medical professionals involved in administering it, to the friends and family processing it, its ethical challenges are sweeping. As the law expands the difficulties that MAiD presents are becoming more and more challenging to navigate both personally and professionally. This pre-conference event is an opportunity to be informed and to discuss a Christian response.
MEDICINE: HAVE WE LOST OUR WAY?
What is medicine and what is it for? What does it mean to be a good doctor? What does it mean to be a good patient?
Answers to these questions are essential both to the practice of medicine and to understanding the moral norms that shape that practice. In the current reigning provider-of-services model, clinicians eschew any claim to know what is good for a patient and instead offer an array of “health care services” for the sake of the patient’s subjective well-being.
Against this trend, Farr Curlin calls for practitioners to recover what they call the Way of Medicine, which offers physicians both a path out of the provider of services model and also the moral resources necessary to resist the various political, institutional, and cultural forces that constantly push practitioners and patients into thinking of their relationship in terms of economic exchange.