NURS 3232 Professional Issues In Nursing

Answer 

Should Nurses and Physicians Assist Patients Who Want to End their Lives ?

Human life is treated with great dignity. For instance, every human being on earth is entitled to the highest form of care. This international human right reveals the great deal of dignity that is accorded to human life (Dyer, White and Rada, 2015). Patient Assisted Death refers to a situation where a physician or a healthcare provider assists a palliative care patient end their lives at their request. The physician achieves the goal through administering some potentially lethal medications to help the terminally ill to end their lives. The topic has been of great for centuries now. There is no federal legislation that provides the way forward concerning how to act in a situation where a terminally ill patient requests to be assisted to die. The supreme court decided that there is no constitutional right to patient assisted dying and directed that issues surrounding the same be decided at the states level. There are several states that have legalized patient assisted dying. These are Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Hawaii. In Hawaii, legislation will start being in effect starting 2019. New York has not yet legalized patient assisted dying. Following a case where a terminally ill patient (suffering form brain cancer) moved from California to Oregon so that she may be assisted to die, New York State has considered enacting a law to legalize the process. Two bills related to the same were moved to the New York state assembly and senate. However, both bills did not go beyond the committee stage.

Both those who support, and critics of patient assisted dying use ethical reasoning to support their stands. Those who support legalization of the process use the following ethical reasons to support their positions. First, is patient autonomy. A patient should have the right to make decisions concerning their own health and wellbeing (Frye and Youngner, 2016). In situations where they feel that they would like to die due to pain and suffering associated with palliative conditions, then their decisions should be respected. Secondly is mercy. The goal of palliative care is to ensure that the patient receives the highest form of care and that pain is minimized or eliminated (The Hastings Centre, 2018). In situations where it is not possible to alleviate pain through any other way, it would help to alleviate that pain through accelerating the process of dying if it is acceptable to the patient. Thirdly is the ethical requirement of non-abandonment. The physician is not supposed to abandon the patient (Gostin and Roberts, 2016). Palliative patients are in the process of dying due to their conditions. They should therefore weigh the options and do that which offers most benefit to the patient. Sometimes, this may be assisting the patient to accelerate the process of dying.

Opponents of legalization of patient assisted dying put forward some ethical reasoning too. One is physician integrity. A physician takes an oath that they will never knowingly cause any harm to a patient. Assisting a patient to die amounts to a violation of the oath (Lehto, Olsen and Chan, 2016). It is therefore unethical to carry out the process on these grounds. The other issue put forward is the potential of risk of abuse. While the legalization may be made to help those who are greatly suffering, it may be abused to cause accelerated deaths even to patients who do not wish to be assisted to die (Syme, 2016). For instance, a physician may decide to accelerate the death of a terminally ill patient when there is no other option for relieving pain even when the patient has not consented to the same.

My stand is that patient assisted dying should be legalized. There are several reasons why I think that this should be done. One is that the patient should have the authority to make decisions concerning their health. While health care professionals should always aim at providing the best possible care, the decision of the patient should be respected. The second reason is that the process may greatly alienate suffering when there is no other option for doing so.

In conclusion, patient assisted dying refers to a situation where a physician administers some medication to accelerate the dying process of a terminally ill patient upon the request of the patient. There is no federal legislation concerning the same and the role of making the legislation is delegated to the states. There are some states that have legalized the process while majority have not. There are both proponents and opponents of the process. Both groups use ethical arguments to support their stand.

References

Dyer, O., White, C., & Rada, A. G. (2015). Assisted dying: law and practice around the world. Routledge.

Frye, J., & Youngner, S. J. (2016). A call for a patient-centred response to legalized assisted dying: annals of internal medicine. Routledge.

Gostin, L. O., & Roberts, A. E. (2016). Physician-assisted dying: a turning point? Routledge.

Lehto, R. H., Olsen, D. P., & Chan, R. R. (2016). When a patient discusses assisted dying: nursing practice implications. Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing, 18(3), 184-191.

The Hastings Centre. (2018). Physician Assisted Death. Retrieved from https://www.thehastingscenter.org/briefingbook/physician-assisted-death/

Syme, R. (2016). A Personal Experience with Suffering Patients: Bringing Home the Assisted Dying Debate. Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity, 4(2).