Voluntary Assisted Dying Research Project
Exploring the experiences of patients, families and health professionals
About the project
In 2017, the Victorian Parliament passed the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act (the VAD Act). As such, individuals with terminal illnesses causing intolerable suffering can lawfully obtain a medicine that enables them to bring about their death at a time of their choosing. This new health policy direction follows a prolonged and highly-contested public and professional debate about its potential medical, social and ethical consequences. Its implementation in 2019 presents an opportunity to evaluate the implications for medicine and society.
This project will comprehensively and systematically assess the effects of the VAD Act in Victoria and develop recommendations for legislative and policy reform. It will achieve this by documenting the experiences of patients who may or may not seek access to VAD, their families and carers, and the health professionals who care for them. In the process, an evidence-based framework and accompanying strategies will be developed to enable sustainable, ongoing evaluation of VAD in Victoria and other jurisdictions.
This research will be conducted over four years. Employing a mixed method longitudinal design, it will be a world-first in several respects. It will be the first comprehensive, prospective study of the implementation of VAD legislation. It will be the first study to describe not just the metrics of usage, but also the longitudinal experiences of patients as well as the impact on families and the health care system. It will be the first to design and validate a framework to allow ongoing review of this and similar legislation. Additionally, it will be the first to link formal qualitative and quantitative data collection with a sustainable process for generating end of life health and legal policy advice. It will also help ensure that VAD legislation provides adequate protections for those who are most vulnerable.
This project will therefore contribute significantly to end of life care of people who seek assistance in dying and those who do not, both in Victoria and around the world.
To express your interest in taking part in this research study please email the VAD research team via the contact details.
Team members
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Professor Paul Komesaroff
Professor Paul Komesaroff is a practising physician and Professor of Medicine at Monash University and Executive Director of the international NGO Global Reconciliation. He has a PhD in philosophy and an international reputation in health care ethics, and has made a major impact on the field of clinical ethics in Australia. He has developed expertise in both qualitative and quantitative investigations of the social and cultural dimensions of health and health care, which has lead to numerous peer reviewed articles, and extensive national and international collaboration. Paul Komesaroff’s work is interdisciplinary: spanning clinical medicine, biomedical research, social research, philosophy and ethical theory, clinical ethics and policy development with respect to ethics and clinical practice. As a physician, his field of speciality is endocrinology. He is Director of the international ethics centre, the Centre for Ethics in Medicine and Society. He is involved in a wide range of teaching, research and action projects in reconciliation and ethics. These span a broad field, including the impact of new technologies on health and society, consent in research, the experience of illness, palliative care and end of life issues.
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Doctor Camille La Brooy
Dr Camille La Brooy is the Research Fellow and Senior Study Coordinator of the VAD Research Project at the School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine at Monash University. She previously worked as a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Melbourne for eight years. She still lectures in the Master of Public Policy and Management in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. She has a PhD (Political Science) from the University of Melbourne. Her PhD adopted a poststructural approach, exploring second-generation Muslim youth identity formation and experiences of belonging in the UK in the post-London bombings era. She also has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne with majors in Political Science, Economics and French. She is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersections of Political Science. Sociology and Public Health. Her research interests are identity, social inequality and difference, deliberative democracy, participatory approaches to evaluation and applied research methods in social and health policy, specifically pertaining to vulnerable populations.
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Professor Cameron Stewart
Cameron Stewart is a Professor at Sydney Law School and Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney. He has degrees in economics, law and jurisprudence. He has published widely on health law issues with a focus on consent, capacity, innovation and vulnerability. His grants have explored these issues in the context of voluntary assisted dying, autologous stem cells, cord blood, and assisted reproductive technology. He had published 6 books in 13 editions and over 100 journal articles. He is a co-author of Ethics and law for the health professions (3rd ed, 2013, Federation Press).
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Associate Professor Alex Holmes
Alex Holmes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Head of consultation-liaison psychiatry at Royal Melbourne Hospital. His research is focussed on the psychiatric sequelae of physical illness, including serious physical injury, pain, multiple sclerosis and brain tumours. He has also held a long term clinical attachment with the Homeless Outreach Psychiatric Service which covers the Melbourne CBD.
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Professor Peter Hudson
Peter is the Director of the Centre for Palliative Care based at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and a Collaborative Centre of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Peter Hudson is a Professor (honorary) at The University of Melbourne and is Professor (honorary) at Vrije University Belgium. Professor Peter is a registered nurse with approximately 30 years of experience in palliative care practice, education and research. He is a former Vice President of Palliative Care Australia and was a Director of the Board of the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care. He is also the Chair of the European Association for Palliative Care’s International Palliative Care Family Caregiver Research Collaboration. Professor Peter is a past recipient of the Premier's Award for translating evidence into practice and has been appointed as a USA Fulbright scholar.
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Professor Ian Olver
Ian Olver AM MD PhD is a medical oncologist, cancer researcher and bioethicist. He is currently Professorial Research Fellow, School of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Adelaide. His previous roles have included being CEO at the Cancer Council Australia and Clinical Director of Royal Adelaide Hospital Cancer Centre and he is Immediate Past President of MASCC (Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer). His PhD in bioethics from Monash was “A ‘Highest Value on Life’ Ethic for Life and Death Decision Making”. He chairs the Medical Oncology Group of Australia Ethics Committee and consults for Bellberry Ethics and previously chaired the Australian Health Ethics Committee of NHMRC.
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Dr Sophie Lewis
Dr Sophie Lewis, is a Senior Research Fellow (ARC DECRA) at the Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW Sydney. A health social scientist, with expertise in qualitative research methods, her research broadly focuses on understanding the experiences of living with long-term health conditions, and how to support people to live well with these conditions. This includes current projects on people’s experiences of loneliness; uncertainty and incurability in the context of advanced and incurable cancers; goal-setting and self-management support and how this is shaped by the professional/patient interactions; and how people navigate Australia’s healthcare system and make choices about their healthcare.