In almost 30 years as a doctor of palliative care, Dr. Nathalie Allard has given attention at the end of life in the hospital’s busy halls and consulted with families with only one curtain that separates them from sick people who shout or vomit to the other side.
On Thursday, he attended the opening of a new installation of palliative care to the northeast of Montreal that represents the type of place where he wants to work and, someday, die.
“It’s my workplace, and my last resting place, probably,” he said happily while taking a tour. “I will die.”
Located in ST-Charles-Borromée in the Lanaudière region, the installation of $ 8 million has 10 rooms for patients with palliative care near the end of their lives, as well as outpatient services to help people with terminal diagnoses to live more comfortably.
It also has a dedicated unit for medical assistance in death, with a room that families of up to 20 can book for the last moments of a loved one.
Medical care providers say that space satisfies a growing need for services at the end of life, including Maid, who participates in more than one in ten deaths in Lanaudière.
Held under a white store with speeches, cocktails and flowers ingeniously scattered on the ground, the launch event felt more like a party than an opening of the building.
While Allard focuses on palliative and does not perform a maid, he says that the end of a life, including death assisted by the doctor, can also be a celebration.
“We celebrate weddings, we prepare for a wedding,” he said. “I will not disappoint you, but we are all going to die. So why not prepare for this great moment and celebrate this great moment that is our death?”
Lanaudière has the highest rate of medically assisted deaths in Quebec
By necessity, Lanaudière is developing experience in death.
The rapid growth area, known by outdoor landscapes and picturesque villages, has a higher proportion of older adults and the highest medically assisted death rate in the province.
More than 5,700 people received medical assistance to die in Quebec between April 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, according to the Province’s End of Life Commission.
The number of maid deaths has increased every year, although the increase rate had slowed down, according to the most recent annual report.
Quebec has the highest proportion of maid deaths in Canada, with 7.3 percent. In the Lanaudière health region, it is 12.4 percent.
Dr. Louis Daigle, doctor and maid supplier in Lanaudière, says that the growing demand for maiden has pressed resources. Manage the maid about 80 times a year, sometimes up to four times a day.
He said it is not clear why the people in Quebec choose Maid at higher rates than in other parts of the world.
“The answer is not simple: there are many factors involved, including personal and social values, religious aspects, multiple diagnostics with predictable and unpredictable death, and high social acceptability,” he said in a written interview.
However, he says that popularity is not surprising, “given the peaceful nature of death and suffering saved both patients and their families.”
The population that ages means a greater need for attention at the end of life
Lanaudière is an atypical case not only when it comes to maid, but also the aging of the population. François St-Louis, who represents the Joliette region in the provincial legislature, said his region is “10 years ahead” of the rest of the province when it comes to age.
St-Charromée, where the new installation is located, occupies the fourth place in a list of Canadian cities with the highest proportion of citizens over 85, with eight percent.
In Lanaudière as a whole, the demographic projections published by the local health authority suggest that the population of people over 75 could grow 51 percent between 2025 and 2035, compared to 40.8 for Quebec in general.
In 2023, new rules came into force that declared that palliative care houses must include the maid in the services they offer.
It was part of an access expansion that also raided the way for people who suffered from degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s to make advanced maid requests while they could still consent.
Sonia Bélanger, the minister responsible for the elderly, told journalists that Quebec has the greatest life expectancy in any province, and more than two million people over 65. That means a growing need for all kinds of services, including the houses of the elderly, home care, palliative care and the maid, he said.
“You will see in the coming years, there will be more and more medical assistance in death that can be offered in different palliative care homes, but also at home and also in hospitals centers,” he said.
The organizers of the event describe the new installation of palliative care as the first in Quebec, an installation constructed mainly with private money, which has been granted to the public health authorities to administer.
They suggested that it could be a model for others.
The federal government says that it will not interfere with the new Quebec law, which allows people to make early medical assistance applications (maid), although some doctors in the province oppose.
The room dedicated to the maid can organize large meetings and includes a refrigerator and counter, speakers to play music and comfortable armchairs in addition to the medical bed.
Next to it there is a living room to give families a quiet space to process and cry.
Allard says that families will be offered spiritual services and staff support, including a chef who can help make a final meal adapted for the recipient. The services are free, he added.
Philippe Ethier, the head of the local health authority, or CISS, for Lanaudière, says that aging does not always mean getting sick.
However, he said that the Health Authority has adapted to comply with the realities of aging, either through the expansion of hospitals, open new long -term care facilities and homes of the elderly, or create new services for older people living in the community.
The maid, she said, is part of a “continuous attention.”
“The end of life is part of life,” he said. “It is a sad event, but it is an event that happens. The more we can have facilities that favor well -being, they favor serenity, and we can plan, it is part of the service we offer.”
