Nearly 80 doctors have told Alberta Health Services they’re willing to perform physician-assisted death, says one of the doctors given the task of deciding how to put legal changes into practice.

Alberta doctors will also be able to prescribe a deadly cocktail that allows patients to drink a slurry on their own, Dr. James Silvius, medical director of community, seniors, addiction and mental health for Alberta Health Services told doctors Saturday.

“We need to start thinking about this in terms of normalizing it (because) this is where we are going,” Silvius told attendees at an Alberta Medical Association special session on the topic.

Regulators have been preparing for the impending legalization of physician-assisted dying in Canada come June 6. Last year, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled a consenting and competent adult with an intolerable “grievous and irremediable medical condition” should have the right to end his or her life with a doctor’s help. The court gave the government a year to amend laws and regulations, then granted a four-month extension in February.

Alberta patients who wish to die with a doctor’s help can now apply to the Court of Queen’s Bench, and at least one Calgary woman won the right to die this way.

Although he didn’t provide numbers, Silvius said Alberta courts are receiving these applications, and at least one request was from a patient with mental illness.

Pointing to doctors’ questions about how the new practice will work, the Alberta Medical Association organized an information session on physician-assisted death with a panel of experts in Edmonton.

— Related: Alberta’s physician-assisted death public survey

“Regardless of our personal views of physician-assisted death, this is now a reality in Canada,” association president Dr. Carl Nohr told the crowd.

Silvius, who serves on an Alberta Health Services committee ironing out the details of how the controversial practice will work in the province, said they’re compiling a list of doctors willing to offer a compassionate death, and prescribe the cocktail for patients to do it themselves. Nohr said those physicians have come forward in every region of the province, suggesting patients should have access regardless of where they live.

Like many health services, physician-assisted death won’t be available in every facility, Silvius said. Getting a referral could be as simple as calling 8-1-1, he said.

Doctors who offer the service in a provincially run hospital or health facility will need to earn the privilege and will have to use approved drugs and protocols, he said.

Patients who get a fatal prescription will have to mix the medications at the pharmacy. They’ll take home a slurry with a short half-life that will only be effective if taken within 24 hours, he said. If the patient doesn’t take the slurry, doctors will be responsible for returning unused drugs to the pharmacist.

A patient who consents to taking her own life may also have to agree to allow a doctor to take additional steps to end her life in the event the medication doesn’t work, Silvius said.

“I would guess we would never achieve the objective 100 per cent of the time,” he said.

Doctors attending the session queried the panel about what guidance and rules would exist for doctors working in private clinics.

Dr. Trevor Theman, registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, said the regulatory body doesn’t tell doctors how to manage conditions or diseases. If a doctor is using an unproven treatment or method, though, the college wants to know about it.

Nohr said the proposed process successfully allows Alberta patients access to physician-assisted death without requiring morally opposed physicians to refer their patients to another doctor to die.

— With files from Max Maudie

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