Euthanasia! your opinions needed please

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  1. Euthanasia/assisted suicide

    • 13
      Are you against it?
    • 59
      Are you for it?
    • 4
      Or are you undecided?

76 members have participated

Hi there I am a 3rd year nursing student. Our class at university have been asked to compile a debate for and against euthanasia/assisted suicide, our class has been divided into two groups and I have been placed in the group for. I have been appointed as one of the main speakers to argue our case and this is where I ask for your help. I would be very grateful if anyone can post their opinions on this matter and their reasons why? It can be for or against but because I am on the for team I would love to see if anyone agrees with it. I personally agree with some aspects of it but I am on the fence due to it being such a sensitive issue. The results from this post will be used in the debate but just the numbers of people not details etc... So opinions are very welcome thank you for reading, much appreciated.

Specializes in Telemetry.
Tomorrow marks the 1 year death anniversary of my Aunt and Uncle (aka Mom and Dad). She was a polio survivor and very dependent on her high school sweetheart, best friend and husband. 6 months prior, he rec a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. This unfortunately sealed the fate for both of them. Being that he had been her caretaker from the time they were 18 (both were now 65) she knew that she did not want to be a burden on anyone in the family, so they decided to leave this world together. Both were too weak to make the journey to a "right to die" state which left them no option but to take matters into the own hands. on Jan 29th 2015, I received a phone call while I was at work informing me he had ended both their lives. They had taken the time to leave notes to everyone letting us know how much the loved us. I am very much a supporter of every state being a Death with Dignity state. NO ONE should ever have to endure what they did.... esp Him. If KY were a right to die state, they would have been able to die surrounded by family and surrounded by love. Unfortunately, their story made the local news as a murder-suicide which lead to public comments of hatred and ignorance. No family should ever be left to pick up the pieces in such a way as we did.

I'm so sorry it had to happen that way.

Hopefully more and more states will move towards a Death with Dignity philosophy.

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I do believe we should be able to use DNR Or to remove life support of someone who cannot recover. Actual euthanasia is an option I am not comfortable with. We can keep a patient comfortable but to actually take their life is a decision above us all! That one belongs to the Man in heaven.

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Specializes in stroke unit, trauma, ENT, MS, ED.

I worked neuro trauma for 4 years right out of nursing school...a small stint in a high volume ED and am now a med surg educator.

I have to say after my experience working with severe traumas and terminal diagnoses like glioblastomas, I am, 100% for assisted suicide and euthanasia. Quite honestly, the only time I ever came home from work crying, and writhing with guilt was after a shift where I spent the better part of 6 hours controlling a heart rate on a pegged, trached, contorted, non verbal, incontinent, MRSA infected 73 year old man. I felt like I was being forced to torture him - hooking him up to more monitors, collecting more labs, pushing more medications....when I rightly should have been giving him ativan and morphine. "Saving his life" was not the right thing to be doing, and it ate at my conscience. The next day, I requested an ethics consult on the patient. His family had been so misguided prior to that consult....it was very unfortunate. Anyway...his code status got changed, and a few weeks later he just arrested. The modified resuscitation orders restricted compressions, so we bagged him and pushed meds. It was all we could do but we the nurses were all relieved for that poor man. I only wish he had had a better palliative care plan.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide should, in my opinion be a palliative care option. I don't think just anyone should be able to request it. I believe in the states where assisted suicide is legal, the person needs to have a terminal diagnosis accompanied by two letters from two independent physicians claiming that the persons life expectancy is less than a certain length of time. In addition to a psych evaluation....

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.......then get steered toward a morphine overdose? It has happened in Oregon......

Really?

When? Where?

Do you have a verifiable official resource to back up this statement?

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I support it, I can end my life with dignity. I do not want to lay in a bed wearing diapers waiting for someone to change me, while getting stage 4 decubi since everyone really is to busy to turn me q2.

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Yes, I am a supporter of euthanasia. It is the similar to a person chosing to forgo cancer treatments. Technically hospice care can be a form of euthanasia. It sets the goals for the client to have a pain controlled, comfortable, albeit extended life.

During 36 years of nursing, I have seen too many patients and family members suffer for days at the end of their life. I have seen some patients given high doses that had no to minimal effect. I have also seen these people die on their own terms. I do believe that left to the natural process with pain meds, people chose their time to die.

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Home Health.
Really?

When? Where?

Do you have a verifiable official resource to back up this statement?

How about ABC News? In 2008, a 64-year-old woman on the state-funded Oregon Health Plan (Oregon Medicaid) found out her lung cancer had returned. The state refused to pay for a $4,000/month drug her oncologist wanted to try, but it would pay $50 for assisted suicide meds.

I'm no fan of FOX News, but they covered her story and that of Randy Stroup. In 2009, he was 53, with prostate cancer. He was also on Medicaid, which refused to pay for chemo, but would pay for assisted suicide. He appealed, and got his chemo covered. His story is also in the documentary How to Die in Oregon.

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I am for PAS/Death with Dignity. I feel that if a person has a terminal diagnosis, and would welcome the opportunity to end their life when they choose, that would be awesome. I have also been in the healthcare setting for close to 20 years (various titles CNA, LPN, RN) and in this time, I have watched some excruciatingly painful deaths, and terrible terrible suffering. In my personal opinion we as healthcare staff are somewhat hastening deaths by administering Comfort care medications. Why not allow the patient to make the determination, in the comfort of their own homes and when they feel they are ready. It seems as though this would give them a better quality of life, rather than suffering for an undisclosed length of time.

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Specializes in School nurse.

Hospice care/palliative care DO NOT EQUAL euthanasia/assisted suicide. There are many comments on this thread that blur the distinctions and give examples that blur the distinctions. We really need to be sure that we grasp the distinctions and we clearly communicate those distinctions. Withdrawing life support is not euthanasia or assisted suicide. Allowing a natural death to occur is not euthanasia or assisted suicide. Reducing heroic interventions (like the 73 yo in the ICU example above) is not euthanasia or assisted suicide. Educating patients and families on treatment options versus palliative care is not euthanasia or assisted suicide.

And to say that hospice/palliative care are not perfect therefore that is a good reason to resort to euthanasia/assisted suicide is ludicrous. Knowledge and technology are ever progressing. We strive for excellence in everything else. We learn, we get better, we advance. Resorting to euthanasia/assisted suicide is the greatest failure of the healthcare system.

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I had to delete a post last night because it came from an angry place but will try again this morning.

A post upthread mentioned LTC and patients with unhealable Stage 4 decubs. We used to be able to get those FTT patients on hospice where they could be made more comfortable and not prolong their death. Not anymore, now they not only don't qualify for hospice but try and find an MD who will prescribe palliative levels of analgesia as a non hospice patient. Those folks are without the option of "keeping them comfortable".

If you could imagine yourself in that situation, essentially bed bound, family tied down to doing the best they can to keep you clean and dry but swimming upstream and exhausted or maybe in LTC where some understaffed nurse with 50 patients is trying to get your meds down with applesauce what would you want for yourself? Are you really thinking you'd want to hold out for a cure? Or just lay there and let god's timing decide?

For me, this would be past the point of where I'd want my advocate (not my nurse) to be legally allowed and provided with a measure to end my life in this rotting shell and to be able to get on or finish their lives remembering me as who I was as a functional, thinking, joyful person who was able to interact with the world in a meaningful way. How that makes an otherwise disabled person feel about their life is irrelevant.

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Specializes in School nurse.

I agree that this is a problem and a truly horrible situation. So then the problem that needs to be addressed is the hospice qualifications and palliative care options. The answer is not to intentionally terminate someone's life. The answer is not induction of death.

By all means let's address the problems in the healthcare delivery system.

But by no means let death be the way we address those problems.

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I agree that this is a problem and a truly horrible situation. So then the problem that needs to be addressed is the hospice qualifications and palliative care options. The answer is not to intentionally terminate someone's life. The answer is not induction of death.

By all means let's address the problems in the healthcare delivery system.

But by no means let death be the way we address those problems.

But what if I choose death, in a clearly written directive? Why can't that be MY answer? Why do you or anyone else get to choose for me? Is it so immoral to allow someone to be assisted out of that horrible end stage of life? Not by the nurse or MD (unless they choose to participate) but by a legal advocate of mutual choosing?

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