I'm watching an OLD episode of Chicago Hope on Discovery Health channel. This episode, a doctor went to court to try and have a morphine drip increased for a patient in a vegitative state up to a fatal dose.
What I found disturbing was one...at one point, the doctor ordered a nurse to adminster it, and she refused. He then proceded to scream and yell at her. Her nurse supervisor told her "Don't you see what you've done? This is done in silence all the time, but now its on the record!"
The doctors said the same thing, how euthanaisa goes on every day in the U.S. with a "wink" between Dr's and families. Has anyone ever heard of this? I'm almost halfway through an ADN program, have worked a year as a CNA and know lots of doctors and nurses and have never heard of this. I just found it highly disturbing. I don't like to see people suffer, but I also don't like to see doctors playing God either.
As one of my nursing instructors says sometimes when people ask her questions: "Look it up!" :)
NurseFirst
was just wondering why you didn't think it qualified as a novel . . .
Main Entry: 2novel
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian novella
1: an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events
yep, it has gone on in silence from what i have heard. working in critical care, i find it highly disturbing that people suffer on and on and on when they are just dragging out the inevitable, so i suppose i fundamentally disagree with you. like when someone riddled with cancer and both breasts removed and skinny as a rail and constantly vomiting and towards the end choking up own fecal matter.... on TPN feedings and too weak to even take a sip of water... and a colostomy and foley... i saw this go on and on.....
and then the death, oxygen down to 70 and the family threatening (in my view) to intubate.
wait til you have seen more before forming an opinion is my advice.
also, in some of these cases doctors are not "playing God" but fulfilling pt and family wishes, and anyway, God does not kill people. he just lets nature work. doctors and nurses just are here to alleviate some of the suffering nature brings with it--- so i guess you could say we "play God" all the time anyway.
I wasn't talking about adding all sorts of prolonging measures to unnecessarily prolong life. I was talking about purposely adminstering a fatal dose of a drug with the intent to end the life.
If the person is in pain, then medicate their pain, if they end up dying due to respiratory distress, then thats one thing. But to euthanize, I'm sorry...that is wrong on about every level. I don't need to see more of anything to know that much.
Trying to ease a person's suffering isn't playing God.
was just wondering why you didn't think it qualified as a novel . . .
Main Entry: 2novel
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian novella
1: an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events
'cuz it ain't invented.
Look it up in Amazon....
Hmmm...I wonder if that means it's a novel to God? :rotfl:
The Netherlands has become the first country in the world to legalise mercy killing after a controversial law on euthanasia came into force on Monday.
The legislation allows patients experiencing unbearable suffering to request euthanasia, and doctors who carry out such a mercy killing to be free from the threat of prosecution, provided they have followed strict procedures.
The country has already tolerated the practice unofficially for decades, but parliament finally enshrined it in law last April.
The law
Patients must face a future of unbearable, interminable suffering
Request to die must be voluntary and well-considered
Doctor and patient must be convinced there is no other solution
A second medical opinion must be obtained and life must be ended in a medically appropriate way
The patient facing incapacitation may leave a written agreement to their death
Other states seem certain to follow the Dutch lead but opposition remains strong across the world.
The UN Human Rights Committee has said it is not convinced that the Dutch system can prevent abuses such as pressure being exerted on the patient.
Comparisons have also been made with Nazi Germany which put to death thousands of handicapped children and mentally ill adults, despite the fact that the Dutch law clearly stipulates that the request for euthanasia must come from the patient alone, while he or she is of sound mind.
Prime Minister Wim Kok has dismissed critics who argue that Dutch doctors now have a licence to kill. He says the idea is "bloody nonsense".
And doctors themselves say the fact that a patient is aware of the option can itself be therapeutic.
"For many terminally ill people, the fact that they can choose to die is an immense consolation," said general practitioner Coot Kuipers of the southern village of Uden.
Suicide pill
The BBC's Geraldine Coughlan in The Hague says there is already debate on widening the scope of the new law.
In one case, a group of doctors is campaigning in support of a colleague who is appealing against a murder conviction for helping a comatose patient to die without a request for euthanasia.
They doctors claim the case is not about mercy killing but medical ethics.
The Netherlands Voluntary Euthanasia Society is also debating whether elderly people should be prescribed a suicide pill to be able to end their own lives when they feel the time is right.
The doctor's role in mercy killing and the individual's right to choose to die are some of the most complex legal and ethical aspects of the emotive issue of euthanasia.
The euthanasia debate is strong in countries other than the Netherlands:
In Belgium, senators voted in October in favour of a euthanasia bill
In France, Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, a trained doctor, has said he will use the Dutch decision to press for legalisation
In Australia, one region, the Northern Territory, became the first place in the world to legalise euthanasia in 1996 before the law was overturned nine months later
In Britain, a paralysed woman recently won the right to die in a ground-breaking case.
Hospital carries out procedure on few terminally ill infantsThe Associated Press
Updated: 4:53 p.m. ET Nov. 30, 2004
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A hospital in the Netherlands-the first nation to permit euthanasia-recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.
The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives-a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.
In August, the main Dutch doctors' association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.
The Health Ministry is preparing its response, which could come as soon as December, a spokesman said.
First nation to legalize euthanasia
Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief.
The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.
Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life, such as severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.
The hospital revealed last month it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors.
Catholic organizations outraged
Roman Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to the announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend the proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral compass.
"The slippery slope in the Netherlands has descended already into a vertical cliff," said Wesley J. Smith, a prominent California-based critic, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Child euthanasia remains illegal everywhere. Experts say doctors outside Holland do not report cases for fear of prosecution.
"As things are, people are doing this secretly and that's wrong," said Eduard Verhagen, head of Groningen's children's clinic. "In the Netherlands we want to expose everything, to let everything be subjected to vetting."
According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in 2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years were from other hospitals.
10 cases per year
Groningen estimated the protocol would be applicable in about 10 cases per year in the Netherlands, a country of 16 million people.
Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium has also legalized euthanasia, while in France, legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is currently under debate. In the United States, the state of Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but this is under constant legal challenge.
However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States and elsewhere, but that the practice is hidden.
"Measures that might marginally extend a child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every day," said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. "Everybody knows that it happens, but there's a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about things they're not going to do."
More than half of all deaths occur under medical supervision, so it's really about management and method of death, Stell said.
It's a sticky area to be sure, but definitely one that should be discussed. If my child was in immense pain and was going to die in a few hours, I would rather end their suffering quickly and mercifully. I attach the same value to suffering that some do. I wouldn't mind if parents were able to make such decisions with medical staff.
What made you think I was referring to you? You of course.
I was referring to the original poster, and teasing at that.
I respect that you are in the military, and I thank you for serving our country, risking your life. However, please don't be so quick with the assumptions.
was just wondering why you didn't think it qualified as a novel . . .
miya
45 Posts
Um, I'm not a nursing student . . .