Introduction The boundaries of right to die with dignity are hard to determine. Keeping the terminal patient comfortable is the purpose of comfort care, however there could be a very thin line between what we consider terminal sedation and euthanasia. In theory, comfort care is quite different from euthanasia. Keeping the patient comfortable and letting the nature take its course is at the core of comfort measures (Gamliel, 2012). Yet, the line between keeping comfortable and facilitating death is often blurry. Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering (Gamliel, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ethical issue of keeping comfortable vs. hastening death, and the ethical principles involved. Facilitating or hastening death is considered unethical or even illegal. Comfort care Comfort care or palliative care is when a terminal patient is placed in a quiet room, where no medical interventions are done except morphine. The patients are not placed on any monitors, no vital signs or given prescription medications. Only the presence of families, periodic turning, swabs for dampening the lips, and perhaps restful music is around the patient. Comfort care is meant to allow a dying person a peaceful end, thus, morphine drip is added for pain relief. Stephens (2012), states that it’s the same medications used to control pain and discomfort, could be used to “help” the patient to stop breathing. The concept of terminal sedation assumes death as an outcome of the intervention. Euthanasia According to Gamliel (2012), euthanasia refers to actions or omissions that result in the death of a person who is already gravely ill. Techniques of active euthanasia range fro... ... middle of paper ... ...ntial part of medical care. It is a care that helps or soothes a person who is dying. The goal is to prevent or relieve suffering as much as possible while respecting the dying person’s wishes. As a nurse caring for patients who turn out to be dying, I support the appropriate use of pain and sedating medications as ethical comfort care. However, to speed up the death process by increasing the amount of morphine or other sedating medications seems very unethical to me. Works Cited Gamliel,E., (2012). To end life or not to prolong life: The effect of message framing on attitudes toward euthanasia. Journal of Health Psychology 18(5) 693–703. Gastmans,C., (2012). Nursing ethics perspectives on end-of-life care. Nursing Ethics 19(5) 603–604. Stephens,R., (2002) The moral meaning of morphine drips: A modern shibboleth denied. Midwest Quarterly, 43(3), 346.
Terminally ill patients deserve the right to have a dignified death. These patients should not be forced to suffer and be in agony their lasting days. The terminally ill should have this choice, because it is the only way to end their excruciating pain. These patients don’t have
However, the framework in practice is very complex, and has various inconsistencies, such as the legality of refusing treatment, the sovereignty of a living will and the issue of prosecuting those who assist someone to end their lives. There is evidence that shows doctors using palliative sedation as a means to facilitate death in patients that are in extreme pain and the use of limiting or even stopping treatment at the patient’s request is not uncommon. The difficulties of putting the law into practice make it extremely difficult for courts, legislators and doctors to reach clear decisions on individual cases. Therefore, the inconsistencies in the legal framework need to be addressed, as with these present the argument against legalising the right to die is weakened. Legalising assisted dying would simplify the framework and ensure that set barriers and safeguards could be created in order to protect the patient and his/her
Death is a frequent visitor of the intensive care unit; patients in this area are at the very peak of their illnesses, many of them being nonverbal. As well as figuring out how to communicate with your patients, one might also have to accept the fact that the case could be medically futile and nothing can be done other than make the patient as comfortable as you can for the remainder of their stay. Recent news headlines have brought this topic closer to home, often if you are not in the health care field or studying to enter the health care field you may hear about these topics on television or the radio but they do not take up place in your conscious thoughts. Hearing about Brittany Maynard made me stop and ask myself what would I do, if I were in her shoes, or if I was a nurse in the hospital that was treating her, and the answer is I do not know. Ethical dilemmas such as this are complicated and there is often not a black and white answer, we live in the gray areas, it is about finding what is right for that patient and being able to accept the fact that their beliefs may not be the same as your
Euthanasia also known as physician assisted suicide is a practice of ending life to relieve pain or incurable diseases with the help of a physician. Whether or not euthanasia is justified is a very serious moral issue. The practice of physician assisted suicide can be optional. As long as it is a person’s own decision, euthanasia is justified in some cases. Every person should have the right to end their life just like some other legal rights. As long as it is an individual’s own decision and the pain they are suffering is incurable, euthanasia can be justified.
In today’s society, physicians are held to high moral and ethical standards in helping patients achieve obtainable and mutually agreed upon goals for their health. However, for the patients constantly suffering from unrelieved pain as a result of a terminal illness, the goals in place and the maximum quality of life they can achieve, may not seem worth the effort to remain alive. As it is the physician’s duty to insure patients are as comfortable as possible, an ethical issue arises when the patient seeks to have the physician assist directly or indirectly in the hastening of their death to achieve a painless and nonsuffering state. Currently, there are two dominant methods in which this can be achieved and that is by euthanasia or physician-assisted
“Michael Manning, MD, in his 1998 book Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: Killing or Caring?, traced the history of the word euthanasia: ‘The term euthanasia.originally meant only 'good death,'but in modern society it has come to mean a death free of any anxiety and pain, often brought about through the use of medication.” It seems there has always been some confusion and questions from our society about the legal and moral questions regarding the new science of euthanasia. “Most recently, it has come to mean'mercy killing' — deliberately putting an end to someone’s life in order to spare the individual’s suffering.’” I would like to emphasize the words “to spare the individual’s suffering”.
Euthanasia, increased dosage of morphine, and a lethal combination of drugs that are administered to patients by the physician or nurse by way of injection is a painless death. Some physicians use euthanasia to help the patient/patients die in comfort without pain and suffering. According to Wiseman, R. 2010, “palliative care physicians would say that good palliative care obviates the need for euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. Removal of life support systems, which include feeding tubes, respirators and cardiac machines, is not euthanasia, nor is it physician-assisted suicide. It is simply good palliative care when it occurs at a point when the dying individual is only being sustained by these measures.”
In this essay, I will discuss whether euthanasia is morally permissible or not. Euthanasia is the intention of ending life due to inevitable pain and suffering. The word euthanasia comes from the Greek words “eu,” which means good, and “thanatosis, which means death. There are two types of euthanasia, active and passive. Active euthanasia is when medical professionals deliberately do something that causes the patient to die, such as giving lethal injections. Passive euthanasia is when a patient dies because the medical professionals do not do anything to keep them alive or they stop doing something that was keeping them alive. Some pros of euthanasia is the freedom to decide your destiny, ending the pain, and to die with dignity. Some cons
Rachels, Jame. "Active and Passive Euthanasia." New England Journal of Medicine 292 (1975): 78-80. Print.
Euthanasia is a serious political, moral and ethics issues in society. People either strictly forbid or firmly favor euthanasia. Terminally ill patients have a fatal disease from which they will never recover, many will never sleep in their own bed again. Many beg health professionals to “pull the plug” or smother them with a pillow so that they do not have to bear the pain of their disease so that they will die faster. Thomas D. Sullivan and James Rachels have very different views on the permissibility of active and passive euthanasia. Sullivan believes that it is impermissible for the doctor, or anyone else to terminate the life of a patient but, that it is permissible in some cases to cease the employment of “extraordinary means” of preserving
The debate on whether voluntary euthanasia should be legalized has been a controversial topic. Euthanasia is defined as ‘a deliberate intervention undertaken with the express intention of ending a life, to relieve intractable suffering’ [1]. Voluntary euthanasia refers to the patients who understand the terms in the consent and sign up under consciousness, while involuntary euthanasia is performed against patient's wishes and some people may regard it as a murder [1].
Some feel that a terminally ill patient should have a legal right to control the manner in which they die. Physicians and nurses have fought for the right to aid a patient in their death. Many families of the terminally ill have exhausted all of their funds caring for a dying patient and would prefer the option of assisted suicide to bankruptcy. While there are many strong opposing viewpoints, one of the strongest is that the terminally ill patient has the right to die in a humane, dignified manner. However, dignity in dying is not necessarily assured when a trusted doctor, whose professional ethics are to promote and maintain life, injects a terminally ill patient with a lethal dose of morphine.
Hospice is giving dignity, support and love to end of life patients. Hospice works with the patient’s pain to give the patient comfort, not to hurry death or hasten the dying process, but to relieve symptoms that are sometimes associated with grief and dying. In my experience, I have witness the positive effects associated with comfort care for both patients and love ones. Dying patients grieve for various reasons. Sometimes it is mentally, physically, emotional or psychological and it affects their love ones as well as their level of comfort. Our promise to every patient we take care of is “To provide exceptional care, to guide the patient and their family on their journey, and to respect their choices. Their comfort, needs and wishes come first. They can count on us when and where they need us” (Hospice and Palliative Care, 2013).
Euthanasia is one of the most recent and controversial debates today (Brogden, 2001). As per the Canadian Medical Association, euthanasia refers to the process of purposely and intentionally performing an act that is overtly anticipated to end the person’s life (CMA, 1998)
Robert Matz; Daniel P. Sudmasy; Edward D. Pallegrino. "Euthanasia: Morals and Ethics." Archives of Internal Medicine 1999: p1815 Aug. 9, 1999 .