"Yes," says Footscray GP Simon Benson.

"In the right circumstances, yes I think I would be, because I would be doing the person a service.

"I would be treating them well and humanely."

Dr Benson has declared himself as a doctor prepared to participate in euthanasia, if it's legalised in Victoria, by making an assessment, writing out a prescription and, if it came to it, administering the fatal drug.

But how many others would be willing to make the same choice?

With huge euthanasia no-go zones to be implemented through Victoria's religious health organisations, including services paid for by taxpayers, it is possible the state could face shortages of willing doctors, particularly in rural and regional areas.

As parliamentary debate on the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill kicks off this week, Fairfax Media has examined how dying might look in the future in Victoria under the proposed euthanasia model. Who is using it? Who is providing the services? What new battle lines will emerge?

Experience in other places where euthanasia is legalised shows that the initial take-up can be slow. Just 24 terminally ill people took the option to end their lives in the US state of Oregon in 1998, after the state's Death with Dignity Act first came into force. Since then, the use of euthanasia has risen steadily most years, peaking at 218 deaths in 2015.

It has been forecast that around 150 to 200 people in Victoria could eventually make use of future euthanasia laws each year, a figure extrapolated from the Oregon data.

What Victoria's future euthanasia users would look like is another question. In Oregon, patients have ranged in age from 25 to 102. But there is a common picture also. The vast majority had cancer and were are older, white and educated - in fact, exceedingly so. More than 90 per cent of the 1127 Oregonians prescribed a lethal medication over almost two decades were aged 55 or above. Almost 97 per cent were white and 73 per cent per cent had some university education.

These statistics partly reflect the demographics of the Pacific Northwest state, but also could indicate how difficult some have found it to find a doctor willing to prescribe euthanasia drugs.

Charles Blanke, a Portland oncologist whose patients are now only those seeking euthanasia, says in past years people had to wait as long as four months to get a doctor to write a script - and that process could take time, persistence and even computer literacy.

Why are so few doctors willing to participate?

"Some [physicians] are actively opposed," Professor Blanke says.

"And others just cannot bring themselves to write a script for a medication that will kill a patient."

It is unknown how many doctors in Victoria might be willing to do this. All health professionals will have a right to conscientiously object to participating, and will not even be compelled to refer patients to others who are.

Professor Brian Owler, a former national president of the AMA and chair of the ministerial advisory panel on voluntary assisted dying, is hopeful that when terminally-ill patients talk to their local GPs, oncologists or neurologists about a wish to end their life, it will be these professionals that step forward.

It is thought that the involvement of people's trusted and long-time doctors will guard against scenarios where people have to go to euthanasia clinics, country patients are left out, or certain practitioners become known "death doctors".

Professor Brian Owler is confident the proposed assisted dying laws have adequate safeguards. Photo: Janie Barrett

Professor Owler says specialists may also emerge in some organisations, such as an oncologist within a cancer institution. "That person might be doing more assessments, and that may not necessarily be a bad thing, if that person does have that expertise," Professor Owler says.

He says doctors breaking the law would be quickly exposed, as every assessment for euthanasia, positive or negative, would be reviewed by the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board.

In Oregon, over 18 years, there have been 336 physicians willing to write deadly prescriptions, an average of 3.4 prescriptions each.

But as many doctors have avoided the task, others have taken on more than their fair share. One doctor has written 71 prescriptions. Charles Blanke says he can't remember the exact number he's done, but it would be in the "high double digits".

Speaking to Fairfax Media over email, Professor Blanke says he liked to give people control at the end of their life. He says when he first started writing scripts for Nembutal, secobarbital and, more recently, a drug cocktail involving Valium and morphine, he generally was not present when people died. But he almost always is now, as he finds his patients prefer it.

He says that afterwards he feels "a little sad of course that we couldn't help in any other way - but, so happy to help the patient with their last desire."

Official statistics kept by the Oregon Health Authority show that around 90 per cent of euthanasia patients were concerned about losing autonomy and not being able to engage in enjoyable activities. They also worried about loss of dignity (77 per cent), losing control of bodily functions (47 per cent) and being a burden on their family and caregivers (42 per cent).

Oregon does not allow doctors to administer the drug if the patients lose the physical capacity, as Victoria's proposed laws would.

Under the planned Victorian laws, adults who are suffering with an incurable illness, have no more than a year to live, and still have decision-making capacity would be eligible for lethal medication, most likely to be a newly created concoction of drugs already approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

In order to qualify, a patient must make three requests (two verbal, one written) and must obtain approval by two senior doctors, including one who specialises in their illness.

Dr Simon Benson oversees the Victorian chapter of Doctors for Assisted Dying Choice. He believes there are about 40 local doctors in the group, actively advocating for legalised euthanasia. And last week more than 120 doctors signed a letter calling for parliamentarians to apply their conscience and vote in favour of the assisted dying legislation.

Dr Benson was one of them.

However he still believes numbers of willing doctors may be a bit of a challenge for any future legalisation, especially in the early days - as even those in favour of the law could be "sort of timid and afraid of the legal repercussions that might happen to start off with".

"In metropolitan Melbourne where there are good medical services, it's not going to be an issue ... but much more so in regional and regional areas," Dr Benson says.

The Footscray GP has previously talked publicly about giving patients, or their families, advice after they said they wanted to end their life. But it doesn't actually happen all that often he says - maybe once every couple of years.

It is possible more could be knocking on his door in the years to come if he becomes known as a doctor willing to have that conversation.

"I would prefer that sort of thing not to happen, but if that happens as a side effect of this legislation going through, it's something I would be prepared to put up with for the greater good of the community," he says.

In Oregon, the average length of the doctor/patient relationship in euthanasia cases is only three months, suggesting regular doctors were not always the ones writing the prescription.

Fairfax Media understands that the management of one large palliative care service in Melbourne would be willing to offer assisted-dying services. Though they could be in the minority.

No healthcare service (public or private) will be obligated to provide patients with euthanasia when they ask for it and Victoria's mammoth Catholic health providers are already set to become major no-go zones for the practice.

Mercy Health operates Werribee Mercy Hospital, a public hospital which offers palliative care, and two dozen residential aged care homes across the state. Mercy Health has confirmed that it will not allow its doctors to prescribe or administer euthanasia drugs.

Its ethics committee is considering what new procedures and training would be needed for staff if euthanasia is legalised, though Adjunct Professor Stephen Cornelissen says Mercy Health "would not judge or deter any person, who following their own conscience, discusses available medical treatments with their general practitioner or wants to be transferred to another medical facility".

St Vincent's Health Australia is taking a similar position.

Whether Catholic providers will be able to completely eradicate euthanasia from their facilities is another question, especially when patients have already got the lethal drug.

"If somebody is provided with some Nembutal, they've have got it at home, who is to say then that they don't get their spouse to bring it to hospital?" Dr Benson says.

Issues like this will continue to emerge if Victoria's assisted dying bill gets the nod later this year.

Fiona Patten, the Reason Party leader who sat on the Upper House committee that heard harrowing accounts of sick, elderly people taking their own lives, says even if the bill passes she expects debate to continue, including over whether people with dementia should be given access.

As it stands, dementia sufferers would be excluded.

"It's just fraught and everyone understands it," Ms Patten says.

"But there will also be other patients that will be suffering intolerable pain, with no future, yet may find it hard to get a doctor to say they have less than 12 months to live."

Fiona Patten has changed her views on dementia and euthanasia. Photo: Wayne Taylor

Looking forward, there is also some concern pro-life activists could target doctors and pharmacists involved in euthanasia services, just as abortion clinic workers and visitors have been harangued and attacked by protesters in the past.

Similarly, if assisted dying is legalised in Victoria, but not elsewhere in Australia, it's possible that the state could see cases of euthanasia migration.

Consider the story of Brittany Maynard, 29, who after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2014, relocated from California to Oregon, in order to be eligible for a physician-assisted death.

Brittany Maynard and husband Dan Diaz. Photo: Brittany Maynard Fund/YouTube

Victoria's proposed laws states people must "ordinarily reside in Victoria" to access euthanasia - which means that anyone interstate wanting to take advantage of the laws would have to permanently move - they could not simply pop across the border for a prescription.

In Castlemaine, 120 kilometres from Melbourne, Dr Daniel Silver has been assisting patients to die for the good part of 40 years. Other people may not call it that, but that's how he sees it.

"We palliate patients in hospital and that's literally putting them to sleep with narcotics so they don't end up coughing up the phlegm," he says

"They eventually get bronchial pneumonia and die very peacefully with their family around them."

But there is another group of suffering patients that the veteran GP says has not been able to help - those in the earlier stage of terminal illness and "in so much pain and discomfort".

Along with Simon Benson, Dr Silver has also put his hand up to prescribe and administer a euthanasia drug, if a patient was to ask him.

"Yes once it becomes legal I will certainly do it in the cases where it is justified,' he says.

Dr Daniel Silver and Dr Simon Benson strongly support Victoria's assisted dying legislation. Photo: Darrian Traynor

Dr Silver says he has put down dogs that were dying in unpleasant circumstances, and wondered why he could not extend the same "humane" treatment to human patients.

"We've all seen deceased patients and a number of us have actually watched a patient take their last gasp - and that's what we would be doing when we administer it," he says.

"I suspect for the first few times it would take a bit of personal courage to do it."

If you are troubled by this report or experiencing a personal crisis, you can call Lifeline 131 114 or beyondblue 1300 224 636 or visit lifeline.org.au or beyondblue.org.au