Physician Assisted Dying Position Statement: The AAHPM Ethics Committee Reports on Its Work (TH352)

Abstract

•Understand the process undertaken by the Academy Ethics Committee in developing the updated position statement.•Understand major similarities and differences between the established and updated position statements.•Be familiar with the Academy members’ responses to the updated position statement. The AAHPM Ethics Committee recently endeavored to update the Academy’s position statement on physician assisted death, last updated in 2007. This contentious issue, set in a rapidly evolving contemporaneous legal landscape, presented the committee and the Academy with the great challenge of forging a consensus among widely disparate views on the subject. Members of the Ethics Committee will 1) describe the committee’s process of updating the position statement, 2) compare and contrast content of the established and updated statements, 3) provide a review of the memberships’ comments/responses elicited during the Academy’s call for comments, and 4) discuss the key position elements in the updated statement.