“This feels like a violation,” the practitioner said. “Like painting targets on doctors’ and nurse practitioners’ backs.
“In an era of rampant trolling, online abuse and hostility from fringe groups, publishing lists of health practitioners’ names and addresses … seems unbelievably irresponsible.”
There are currently 116 medical professionals including physicians, nurse practitioners and psychiatrists who have volunteered to assess patients for assisted dying and/or carry out the procedure.
Their names and addresses are held in a register managed by the Support and Consultation for End of Life in New Zealand (SCENZ) Group. On its website, the ministry said the list was kept confidential to “protect the privacy and safety of individuals providing the service”.
A medical professional who is on the SCENZ register said the email from the secretariat was “cryptic” and “puzzling”. They believed their identity was protected by law, and did not understand how this could be reversed by a complaint to the Ombudsman.
It is not known who made the complaint or what it alleged. The Ombudsman’s Office said it could not comment on the nature of the complaint or its status without more specific details.
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A Ministry of Health spokesperson confirmed the ministry was responding to the complaint but could not comment further.
“We fully appreciate the concern that has been raised by some of the practitioners involved with the service, and the ministry continues to strongly maintain the contents of the SCENZ list as confidential.”
Under the assisted dying legislation, practitioners can be named in relation to their general experience with assisted dying, but not in relation to specific cases.
However, doctors said it would be a much more significant step to make the entire SCENZ register publicly available.
Medical staff who take part in assisted dying must do so independently from their district health board. That means that SCENZ holds their personal addresses and phone numbers.
Several medical staff said they were concerned that just the possibility of being named would dissuade medical staff from volunteering their services, regardless of whether the complaint was successful or not.
“The very fact that Government is even considering releasing health practitioners’ names and addresses will have a chilling effect on the numbers of [people] willing to provide assisted dying services in the future,” the health practitioner said.
The email from the secretariat to the SCENZ register included a survey which asked whether practitioners were comfortable with their details being released; whether they had ever felt unsafe because of their assisted dying work; and whether being publicly identified would make them less willing to take part in assisted dying.
Not all practitioners were worried about losing their privacy. One doctor on the SCENZ list said assisted dying was strongly supported in this country and he had not witnessed any of the animosity observed in some jurisdictions overseas.
“In a small town it does not take long for families to talk about their family’s experience and the doctor’s name is always going to come up,” he said.
“And I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I am providing the service. I do so knowing that it’s been legislated for, that it was supported by a large number of people in a referendum, and I think it’s becoming embedded in New Zealand society pretty well.”
He added: “However, we have been strongly discouraged from publicising the fact that we are involved.”
New Zealanders overwhelmingly supported the End of Life Choice Act in a public referendum in 2020, with 66 per cent in favour and 34 per cent against.
“This is a service that people want,” a health practitioner said. “And if there’s enough online targeting of providers, it’s a service they will lose.”
Between November 2021, when assisted dying became legal, and December 2022, 316 people had been helped to die under the service - a rate of around five deaths per week.
As of March last year, the secretariat had received four formal complaints about the Assisted Dying Service, and no complaints about the law being breached.
Three of those complaints had been resolved, and one - relating to a family’s experience of a death in a public hospital - is under investigation by the Health and Disability Commissioner.
