Dr. Greg Mewett:

Certainly. From start to finish, that is, from the time the patient makes their first request until such time as they may be issued a permit and receive the medication, the voluntary assisted dying process can take anywhere between three to four weeks. If people are fairly late in making the application, then that is a long time in their end of life. Many people deteriorate quite rapidly in that time. They may lose the capacity to make a decision, they may die very suddenly, as patients sometimes do with terminal illness because of a complication, and therefore do not make it through the whole process of the voluntary assisted dying. Those patients will continue to have excellent palliative care, as they all do, to the very end, regardless of how they die. That is what happens. That is happening less when people are realising that it takes a little longer to get through the process, so they may start the process a bit earlier.