It took four adults to manage the end-of-life medication for Alex Brown's nephew, who died at only three years old. And they still struggled.

"We were grieving as a family, and medication should be something that [is] really easy. It shouldn't be the hardest part of someone passing away," Ms Brown said.

"Everything that can go wrong did go wrong."

The experience inspired the former public servant to retrain as a pharmacist, with a special interest in end-of-life, or palliative, care.

Since then, medicine shortages have made it even harder for the terminally ill to have a pain-free death.

The state of end-of-life care in the ACT has been in the spotlight since voluntary assisted dying laws came into effect on November 3.

Palliative Care Australia chief executive Camilla Rowland sa

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