#6 The Locked Box

Imagine turning up to work one day to discover flyers outside your office accusing you of being a ‘death peddler’ and an ‘Uber service for poison’.

Professor Michael Dooley runs Victoria’s Statewide Pharmacy Service. When voluntary assisted dying became legal it was his job, and that of his team, to come up with medication that would effectively and painlessly end a terminally ill person’s life - and also a way to safely get it to them.

Statewide pharmacists Prof Michael Dooley (right) and David Seymour. “We've told them very, very clearly that if they take that medication, it will kill them. Saying that the first time to someone sitting two feet in front of you is probably the hardest part.” - Photo: Juliet Lamont

Michael and his team are the last step – and the final safeguard – in the long legal process a dying person has to go through to access the medication.

What is it like to walk into someone’s home to give them a draught designed to end their life? Who do they meet and what do they hear? And what happens if, at this very last step, they have to tell someone, ‘I’m sorry, but no.’?

“We find leaving very, very difficult. Because you have to say goodbye... and we've all talked about how we do it… And there's no easy way and we all have our own little way. You know, it's not a normal goodbye.”

Professor Michael Dooley