Attitudes and practices of physicians regarding physician-assisted dying in minors

Objective: To investigate attitudes towards physician-assisted death in minors among all physicians involved in
the treatment of children dying in Flanders, Belgium over an 18-month period, and how these are related to actual
medical end-of-life practices.
Design: Anonymous population-based postmortem physician survey.
Setting: Flanders, Belgium.
Participants: Physicians signing death certificates of all patients aged 1-17 years who died between June 2007
and November 2008.
Main outcome measures: Attitudes towards physician-assisted death in minors and actual end-of-life practices in the deaths concerned.
Results: 124 physicians for 70.5 percent of eligible cases (N=149) responded. 69 percent favour an extension of the Belgian law on euthanasia to include minors, 26.6% think this should be done by establishing clear age limits and 61 percent think parental consent is required before taking lifeshortening decisions. Cluster analysis yielded a cluster (67.7 percent of physicians) accepting of, and a cluster (32.2 percent of physicians) reluctant towards physician-assisted death in minors. Controlling for physician specialty and patient characteristics, acceptant physicians were more likely to engage in practices with the intention of shortening a patient's life than were reluctant physicians.
Conclusion: A majority of surveyed Flemish physicians appear to accept physician-assisted dying in children
under certain circumstances and favour an amendment to the euthanasia law to include minors. The approach
favoured is one of assessing decision-making capacity rather than setting arbitrary age limits. These stances,
and their connection with actual end-of-life practices, may encourage policy-makers to develop guidelines
for medical end-of-life practices in minors that address specific challenges arising in this patient group.