Self-administration of oral voluntary assisted dying medication in Victoria, Australia: the first 6 years

OBJECTIVES: To describe the reported experience of patients who self-administered voluntary assisted dying medication in Victoria, Australia. METHODS: A population-based retrospective study of voluntary anonymous feedback survey responses from carers of patients who had self-administered the voluntary assisted dying medication. The participants were carers of patients who self-administered the voluntary assisted dying medication in Victoria, Australia, between 19 June 2019 and 30 June 2025. The main outcome measures were time to swallow the mixture, volume swallowed, time to loss of consciousness and time to death. RESULTS: Of 572 patients who self-administered the voluntary assisted dying medication, 563 (98.4%) reported that the patient swallowed the mixture in less than 4 min; and 95.1% swallowed the entire volume. Loss of consciousness was <10 min in 93.2% of patients and reported to be 30 s to under 2 min in four patients. All patients who swallowed the mixture died. The majority of patients (64.1%) were reported to have died in <30 min, with 86% within 1 hour. There were 37 responses (6.5%) where it took more than 2 hours for death to occur and 12 responses where the time taken exceeded 6 hours; the longest reported was 11 hours. 33 of the 37 patients that were reported to have taken longer than 2 hours to die were reported to have swallowed the entire volume of the mixture. CONCLUSION: Self-administration of voluntary assisted dying medication has been demonstrated to be safe and effective with the safeguards in place in Victoria, Australia.