In Liège, a terminally ill woman (36) was suffocated with a pillow after a doctor and two nurses had previously unsuccessfully tried to euthanize her. Does euthanasia often go wrong? Do doctors sometimes panic? ‘Performing a euthanasia is also an extremely stressful experience for a doctor’, says doctor Patrick Wyffels.
Patrick Wyffels (71) is a retired general practitioner but still active as a LEIF doctor. LEIF doctors are doctors who are specially trained to assist general practitioners with euthanasia. “Performing euthanasia for the first time is a huge step. That is why most GPs ask a LEIF doctor to be there the first or second time,” he says. “It is not easy to drive calmly and without stress to a patient’s home to perform euthanasia there. Euthanasia is also extremely stressful for the doctor, even though it is technically not difficult.”
A painless death
“The first times you perform euthanasia, you always have a little fear that it will not work. As a result, your hand can become less steady when you look for a vein,” says Dr. Wyffels. “It is not easy to find a suitable vein in severely emaciated people anyway. I have already experienced it myself that I started to inject and that the vein suddenly burst. I had to sting five or six times. That was quite stressful. You know the patient expected a painless death. And besides, the family was watching it.”
Doctor Wyffels says he has never panicked, but he can imagine it happening. He suggests that the medical team in Liège may have panicked when it turned out that the medication to euthanize the 36-year-old woman did not have the desired effect. “In that sense, I can understand what happened afterwards, which of course did not mean that what they did was okay, because that is certainly not the case,” he says.
“But sometimes it can indeed take a long time before a patient dies. I myself have experienced that there was no heartbeat and that I was already filling out the papers when the patient suddenly started breathing again. Then you have to stay calm and know what to do. An additional problem is that the medication we use to perform euthanasia is not always readily available. Barbiturates, for example, are widely used, but we now have to purchase them abroad. Either we have to work with medication that we are less familiar with, which is also not ideal.”
Wyffels emphasizes that a doctor who performs euthanasia is usually alone. There is no medical team to assist, except if it happens in a residential care center or a hospital. Usually, the doctor is in a room at the patient’s home, often with the family. It is the patient who can decide where the euthanasia is performed and who can be present. “Usually that all goes well, but sometimes there are distant relatives who fight like devils in a holy water font. Or a child who puts enormous pressure on his parent to cancel the euthanasia. I do understand that, so we will enter into a dialogue with them. But in the end it is always the patient who has the last word.”
This is not to say that it is all doom and gloom, on the contrary. “Every euthanasia is exceptional. It is always a very individual event, but what often stays with me is how enormously grateful patient and family can be. I once performed euthanasia on a woman with young onset dementia. Her elderly mother, ex-partner, partner and three children with their partners were all present. I walked out feeling like I had done something good. Someone is suffering unbearably and you have put an end to it.”
Recite poetry
“It’s really about doing something right. You are a very important person to those people at the time, but as soon as you get in, you make yourself small. Then you ask to let you know when they are ready. There are patients who want euthanasia done immediately. Others require a little more time. I once spent half a day with a poet who wanted to recite poetry. That was very special. As a doctor, you also have to make time for such wishes. Most LEIF doctors can do that, because they are often already retired, just like me.”
Wyffels has been a LEIF doctor for twenty years now, which means that he has already gained a great deal of experience with euthanasia. But most doctors in our country have no experience with it. Last year, 3,000 euthanasia was performed in Belgium, while there are just over 47,000 doctors here. “You’re less nervous because you’ve mastered the tech and know what to do,” he says. “Because you have built up experience, you are a bit calmer. But that does not mean that performing euthanasia gets used to. I’ve always intended: I don’t want it to get used to.”
