Inappropriate attitudes and unnecessary barriers make it difficult for terminally ill people to access voluntary assistance in dying, prompting calls for changes to recently implemented laws.

Voluntary assisted dying has become legal in six Australian states and the ACT over the past five years and is increasingly accepted by healthcare providers.

But challenges remain, including lack of awareness that the practice is legal and available, complex application processes, and uncooperative health facilities.

Some doctors are forced to travel thousands of miles to evaluate their patients.

TV channel and Go Gentle Australia founder Andrew Denton says people at the end of life want and need to be in control of what happens to them and have the ability to choose not to suffer.

“Control removes unnecessary anxiety about how difficult the end will be,” he told AAP.

Mr Denton said voluntary assisted dying legislation was intended to provide people with this control, but because the issue was so controversial, the laws ended up being conservative and unfit for purpose.

“They are so conservative that it is difficult for many people at the end of their lives to access them,” he said.

“Too many people find themselves stuck in establishments that do not support voluntary assistance in dying and then find themselves in very painful situations.

“Many people die before having access to voluntary medical assistance in dying.”

Mr. Denton attributed the lack of support in some circumstances to states allowing facilities to conscientiously object to voluntary assisted dying.

“What we’re seeing are terrible stories in Australia and people dying, being told by the facilities that care for them… if you choose voluntary assisted dying, you need to get out of here,” he said. he declared. .

“This is a significant issue, and the fact that we continue to hear these stories is very distressing.

“It’s cruel, it’s caused great suffering and it’s really inappropriate.”

Legal bans in Victoria and South Australia also prevent doctors from initiating discussions about voluntary assisted dying with patients.

“That means if you don’t know about voluntary assisted dying, if English maybe isn’t your first language, if you don’t have higher education, you don’t know “Maybe it’s not a choice for you,” Mr. Denton said. .

“It’s not surprising that participation is lower than in other states where doctors can bring it up as part of a conversation about your choices.”

There are also federal laws that criminalize the use of electronic communications, such as telehealth and the Internet, to discuss voluntary assistance in dying.

Mr Denton said some doctors were being forced to travel 3,000km round trips to assess dying people who wanted to be deemed eligible for voluntary assisted dying.

“It’s a huge waste of resources, it’s a huge burden on doctors and, even worse, we have cases of people living in remote and rural areas where it takes so long for doctors to come and assess them …that they die before being treated. to exercise their legal right,” he said.

“This is a clear example of a law that needs to be changed.”

These issues were the focus of the second trans-Tasman voluntary assisted dying conference in Brisbane this week.

Victoria was the first state to implement voluntary assisted dying laws in 2019.

Since then, more than 7,200 terminally ill people in Australia and New Zealand have sought access to this end-of-life choice and 3,242 have died, supported by more than 1,200 healthcare professionals.

The typical candidate was a man around 70 years old with terminal cancer.

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