​We receive a variety of messages from our supporters that let us know our work has had a significant impact on their lives. Here's a recent example:
 
"I watched every video on the PCV website. It gave me great comfort and knowledge about what to expect as my husband and I navigated the Act 39 process." ...from a recent thank-you note.

Watch:
One of the most-watched videos (with over 500 views) is that of Peggy and Samantha Stevens in our Living While Leaving series, sharing their loving memories of Eric Stevens during his journey using medical aid in dying.
 
Speaking Engagements:
On Sunday, April 7, Peggy Stevens spoke at the Universalist Unitarian Congregation in St. Johnsbury. A warm and engaging speaker, Peggy shared her personal experience during the time when her husband Eric's health was declining from a neurological disease. She discussed how they had to make a transition from looking for cures to planning what they hoped would be a peaceful death. Peggy's story is about living life fully while accepting the inevitable end of life. 

UVM's 3rd Annual Public Philosophy Week was first launched in 2017 to bring discussions out of the academy and into the public square. New in 2019, is a series of seven discussions on death and coping with grief, organized by UVM alumnus Alexandria Kerrigan, a recent graduate of the university's End-of-Life Doula Program. 

The Death Talk Philosophy Week series begins on Sunday, March 24 at 2 pm with Krista Beth Atwood, former pastor of the Faith United Methodist Church in South Burlington, leading off with "Is there Life Without Death?" There are seven daily events at various times, covering a diversity of death topics featuring different speakers including Betsy Walkerman, president of Patient Choices Vermont, on Tuesday, March 26 from 6-7 pm leading a discussion on "ACT 39 and Death with Dignity." 

Join us for seven days of Death Talks during Public Philosophy Week at the Wishbone Collective!

• Sunday, March 24 from 2-3 pm
  Kristabeth Atwood
  Is There Life Without Death? Cryogenic Freezing & Fountains of Youth: Can One Truly Live While Trying to Outrun Death?
• Monday, March 25 from 12-1 pm
  Sharon Keegan
  Why Now Matters at the Time of Death
• Tuesday, March 26 from 6-7 pm
  Betsy Walkerman President of Patient Choices Vermont
  Act 39 & Death with Dignity
• Wednesday, March 27 from 4-5 pm
  Howard Hoffman
  Psychedelics at the End of Life
• Thursday, March 28 from 10-11 am
  Judson Browning
  Burial Ethics: From Environmental Integrity to Grief
• Friday, March 29 from 7-8 pm
  Erin Ostreicher
  The Art & Ornamentation of Grief
• Saturday, March 30 from 11 am-12 pm
  Mary Hamilton
  ​How Experiencing Death Changes the Way We Live

​The idea of bringing people together to talk about death was originated by Swiss sociologist and anthropologist Bernard Crettaz who organized the first Café Mortel in 2004. The idea spawned an international Death Cafe movement with more than 6,000 hosted so far by various organizations around the world. 

Death Talks provide a safe place for open dialogue and the philosophical exploration of themes such as mortality, the afterlife, spirituality, cultural practices, history, individual experience, and more. Death Talks is not a personal support group nor a counseling session.

• Location: Wishbone Collective is a second-floor loft overlooking Main Street in Winooski, with entrance at 4 West Center Street.
• Light refreshments will be served.
• Donations to support the shared space are appreciated but not required.

RSVPs are not necessary but you can do so while sharing the event with friends at the Facebook event Page: Death Talks x Public Philosophy Week.
​
Wishbone Collective is located at: 4 West Center Street, Winooski, Vermont

Monday, March 25, 2019
Hilton Hotel, Burlington, Vermont

The Gerontology Symposium is a conference designed to enable participants to gain knowledge pertaining to a key areas of caregiving for older adults: End of Life Care and Transitions. The symposium also seeks to strengthen the connections between family caregivers and professionals. This year, topics will include:

• Keys to Navigating Care at the End of Life
• Advance Directives and Advance Care Planning
• Complex decision making when multiple agents are involved
• Grief and Bereavement, as experienced by families and professionals
• End of Life Doulas, an additional resource
• Hospice and Those Living with Dementia
• Hospice and Palliative Care services

Keynote Presenter - Dr. Karen Wyatt, Author of 
What Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying 

The Center on Aging at The University of Vermont is pleased to present this program whose goal is to provide current, research-based information on topics relevant to both family and professional caregivers who work with our rapidly growing population of older adults. For the second year, the conference will offer two different tracks:

• Family Caregiver Track
• Professional Track

Registration Fees

Professionals: $35
Family Caregivers: $20 (discounted registration is intended for those caring for family members)
Continuing Education credit: add $20

Click for more information and to register... 

The idea of bringing people together to talk about death was originated by Swiss sociologist and anthropologist Bernard Crettaz who organized the first Café Mortel in 2004. The idea spawned an international Death Cafe movement with more than 6,000 hosted so far by various organizations around the world. 

Here in Vermont, the movement to socially de-stigmatize talk about death and dying is well underway, with many events over the past few years. In August 2018, Alexandria Kerrigan, a recent graduate of the University of Vermont's End-of-Life Doula Program, launched the first Winooski Vermont Death Café and has hosted six monthly events since, renaming the concept as Death Talks last December.

Death Talks provide a safe place for open dialogue and the philosophical exploration of themes such as mortality, the afterlife, spirituality, cultural practices, history, individual experience, and more. Death Talks is not a personal support group nor a counseling session.

On Wednesday, January 23 from 6-8 pm, Betsy Walkerman and Francesca Arnoldy of Patient Choices VT will present a session regarding Vermont's Medical Aid in Dying Law (Act 39). 

• Location: Wishbone Collective is a second-floor loft overlooking Main Street with entrance at 4 West Center Street in Winooski, Vermont.
• Light refreshments will be served.
• Donations to support the shared space are appreciated but not required.

Patient Choices Vermont provides informative and engaging speakers and is also able to facilitate discussions (stand-alone or within larger events). Please contact Francesca Arnoldy, our research and community outreach specialist, to book a customized presentation on Act 39, Vermont's Medical Aid in Dying law. 

Alexandria Kerrigan holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Education and is pursuing a masters in social work. She has been interested and comfortable with the topic of death since childhood and has extensive personal experience with grief and loss. 

The Wishbone Collective hosts and sponsors monthly Death Talks in alignment with their mission to create a unique community space for all. 

RSVPs are not necessary but you can do so while sharing the event with friends at the Facebook event Page: Death Talks featuring Patient Choices Vermont: Act 39 Seminar.
Thanks for considering attending this community outreach event,

"I would like to do anything I can to help Vermonters understand the gift of having Act 39. One of the gifts I'm only now recognizing is that it gave me the ability to grieve before my husband died - and the same for him. For nine months, we spoke only our truth to each other, and flirted, and cried, and found a way to believe that we would not be separated." - Susan G.
 
Dear Friends:
 
Those eloquent words from a grateful supporter made me pause, read them again, and let my heart absorb their full impact. Whenever PCV receives thanks like this, I know how important our work is.  Together, we share an effort to be informed and ready to contribute to end-of-life choice discussions with our friends. This year we celebrated the 5th anniversary of Vermont’s Patient Choice law by fostering those discussions and advancing the future of Act 39 on several fronts.
 
From One to None… to Six Pharmacies!
Since the enactment of Act 39 and until last January, we had just ONE pharmacy in Vermont filling medical-aid-in-dying prescriptions! Then, we learned that the only participating pharmacy would cease filling Act 39 prescriptions as a result of new corporate ownership. For several weeks there were NO pharmacies in Vermont available to fill medical-aid-in-dying prescriptions.
 
The PCV board immediately established an initiative to achieve pharmacy coverage across the state and by February, we were able to convince the one pharmacy to resume filling prescriptions. Realizing the vulnerability, we began work to add pharmacies to the list and are now at SIX pharmacies ready to serve Vermont’s end-of-life patients - an essential component that helps to solidify Act 39.
 
No organization but PCV would have addressed this vital pharmacy issue!
 
We also clarified with Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s administration that Vermont-licensed doctors in their network who practice in Vermont can indeed assist Vermont patients under Act 39 - a very important development for communities along our eastern border.

​Patient Choices Vermont surveys candidates for statewide and legislative positions.

• For information on where and how to vote in Vermont, click here.
• Visit the Vermont Secretary of State’s voter page to find out your voter registration status, what district you live in and more.
• Then find your legislator with this Vermont District Map, or this Text-based Search. 
• VPIRG’s Tools for Democracy project provides further details on all of the candidates for Vermont office in the 2018 election: links to their website, Facebook page and Twitter profile if they have one.

Then, check on the results of PCV's Candidate Survey (508 KB PDF) which asks, "Are you inclined to oppose or support efforts to restrict or repeal Vermont's medical-aid-in-dying law (also known as "Act 39" and "Death with Dignity)?" Candidates who would vote to keep Act 39 in place answered with "OPPOSE" whereas candidates who would vote for restrictions or vote to repeal Act 39 answered "SUPPORT." A blank space means the candidate did not respond.

​We have also posted the guide in Scribd below. If it appears too small to read, scroll to the bottom and click on the Fullscreen icon (right side), then scroll to find the candidates from your district.

We have data for many, but not all candidates. If they didn't respond to our online survey and have no voting record on this issue, the line is left blank. If you know a candidate who hasn't responded, please ask them about their position and suggest that they contact PCV so that we can add their data to the table below. 

Please note that in our survey "OPPOSE" answers are from candidates who would vote to keep Act 39 in place, whereas "Support" answers are from candidates who would vote for restrictions or repeal.

​On Tuesday, October 9, 2018 delegates of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) approved a substitute resolution to adopt a position of "engaged neutrality" toward medical aid in dying as a personal end-of-life decision in the context of the physician-patient relationship.

AAFP President Michael Munger, M.D., of Overland Park, Kansas says, "The action taken today allows the AAFP to advocate for engaged neutrality on this subject at future AMA House of Delegates meetings. Through our ongoing and continuous relationship with our patients, family physicians are well-positioned to counsel patients on end-of-life care, and we are engaged in creating change in the best interest of our patients."

This stance puts them at odds with the American Medical Association (AMA) Code of Ethics which states: “Instead of engaging in assisted suicide, physicians must aggressively respond to the needs of patients at the end of life.”

The substitute resolution also calls on the AAFP to reject use of the phrase "assisted suicide" or "physician-assisted suicide" in its own formal communications and to direct the Academy's delegation to the AMA to promote the same action in the House of Delegates.

"We have to understand the power of family physicians," he said. "We have an ethical, personal role in our patients' lives. We can't be opposed to something that some people think is valuable. I think we have to have a more neutral stake in this difficult area. We have to understand the power of family physicians," says Arnold Pallay, M.D., AAFP delegate from Montville, New Jersey.

The Vermont Medical Society (VMS) has already adopted a neutral position on medical aid in dying, in recognition that it is legal in Vermont and that many Vermont doctors and their patients have already participated in the Act 39 process. The VMS policy may be found at http://www.vtmd.org/sites/default/files/2017End-of-Life-Care.pdf.  

We understand that Vermont doctors participated in the AAFP meeting and urged adoption of the new policy.

“As prominent national organizations like AAFP recognize the legitimate and very personal nature of a decision to use medical aid in dying, we will increasingly solidify end-of-life choice and the comfort it provides, “ says Betsy Walkerman, President of Patient Choices Vermont.  “We are pleased that Vermont’s careful and measured approach to medical aid in dying is contributing positively to changes like this on the national level.”

Vermonters reflect on five-year anniversary of the state's Medical Aid in Dying law.

Tom Ozahowski, is shown walking on a wooded trail near his Thetford home. He made his career at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire where he worked with patients who often stared death in the face.

"People have cardiac arrests and have near death experiences that, it's not everybody, but some of them have had profound situations that have helped me," he said those situations have helped him find peace with his fate. 
"I was diagnosed in 2008," Ozahowski said regarding his prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones. "I have no idea exactly whats in store."h

The one thing he does know is how he plans on dying.
"My sons are totally in agreement that I can use Medical Aid in Dying and get a prescription to be self-administered," he said.

Dr. Diana Barnard, with the University of Vermont Medical Center, would like to see more Dartmouth-Hitchcock doctors on board.
The palliative care specialist said most of her patients worry about losing their sense of control, something many wish to gain using Act 39.
"Most people that I talk to don't want to die. They want to live, but they are dying from their underlying illness and we cant stop that," Board Member Dr. Diana Barnard said.

In the past five years, the state's Department of Health said 52 people have qualified to utilize the law, but only 29 people have chosen to end their lives.

"The law itself was really carefully crafted and is working very well," said PCV President Betsy Walkerman, also featured in the story.

​​Click to Watch the Story...

Dr. Diana Barnard appearing before the New York State Legislature's hearings on medical aid in dying.