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Teaching Euthanasia: The Integration of the Practice of Euthanasia Into the Grief, Death, and Dying Curricula of Postgraduate Family Medicine Training

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Gerrit K. Kimsma
Affiliation:
family practitioner and philosopher who lectures on family practice medicine and medical ethics in the departments of Family and Nursing Home Medicine and Philosophy and Medical Ethics at the Free University of Amsterdam.
B. J. van Duin
Affiliation:
practices Family Medicine and lectures in Family Medicine in the Department of Family and Nursing Home Medicine at the Free University of Amsterdam.

Extract

The open practice of euthanasia in The Netherlands stood alone in the world until the government of the Northern Territories in Australia accepted the possibility of physician-assisted suicide. Even though the active ending of lives in The Netherlands is still a crime by law, the current practice allows it and acquits physicians if certain conditions have been met. Of the many facets of euthanasia, the teaching of this practice represents a further logical step. In this contribution, we intend to describe the comprehensive teaching program of euthanasia of the Free University of Amsterdam's Postgraduate Family Medicine Program. Here students receive university-based training for 1 day a week in a cohort of 12 and on the job training for 4 days with individual family physicians for 2 consecutive years. We especially intend to portray the integration of euthanasia into the wider teaching of the process of counseling and aid of the dying.

Type
Special Section: Physician-Aided Death: The Escalating Debate
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

Notes

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