Palliative care specialists fear doctors with as little as six hours online training could end up helping to euthanise patients who would have wanted to live if they had proper care and pain relief.
This comes a new Ministry of Health survey reveals fewer than a third of health practitioners are prepared to participate in the assisted dying regime.
Palliative care specialists say that could mean euthanasia is unavailable in some areas and a small band of itinerant doctors with no connection to their patients may do the bulk of the cases.
Here's Investigative Journalist Guyon Espiner, with the first in a two part series on how prepared New Zealand is to introduce assisted dying.
