MAiD as human connection: Stories and metaphors of physician providers' existential lived experience

Being the one who provides an assisted death is complex and profound, and yet the lived experience of this novel act is little understood in Canada. In this article, we highlight the methodological issue of how one might peer behind emergent threads that addressed us in the data. A narrative-hermeneutic approach revealed that for the eight providers we interviewed, this is an embodied existential experience. The act of providing MAiD fostered embodied feelings of conviction, courage, compassion, and intimacy. We ultimately find that the experience of providing MAiD is human connection. The experience holds a dimension of the existential and provides a way to get closer to the unsayable profoundness that occurs in the space of providing death for a suffering other. This is important if not crucial in medicine and health care, as shared experiences connect us to what it is to be human, especially at end of life.