I think one of the cruelest things we do is let patients lay in nursing home beds without the legal ability to terminate their own lives. I'd be interest in what other nurses think of this.
If you ask active people who are in their 40s and alert and you say to them "when you get older and you lose the capacity to know your surroundings and you no longer recognize your family members, and if you reach a point where someone has to change your brief in a bed or feed you your meals, would you prefer to live your life like that or would you prefer someone terminate your life painlessly and peacefully?"
What do you think most people's response would be???
Mine would be termination of my life! But guess what that is against the law in most states.
I'd be interested in knowing what other nurses think about this. We get trained over and over again about abuse. Well to me, the biggest abuse we commit is we do not allow Voluntary Euthanasia over laying in a soiled brief in a nursing home bed where we can't even feed ourselves anymore. Voluntary Euthanasia is illegal in all states and PAD is allowed only in Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Vermont.
Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Critical Care Nursing.
Voluntary euthanasia implies someone else ending the life. As the decades go by I suspect that various forms of self-controlled suicide will become more accepted from a societal and legal point of view.
A bit off topic, but of interest to those who find the subject matter interesting is the book "Still Alice" by Lisa Genova. It's a novel about a brilliant female psychologist who slowly develops early Alzheimers and decides that she wants to control the ending of her life.
I'll not go farther for fear of spoiling the story. I haven't read it but on goodreads.com and other places it is rated highly.
There's actually a movie put about that book with Julianne Moore as the lead actress. I was thinking of watching it, seems like a good storyline.
I had an ICU pt where the family refused any narcs or sedatives in the chance one of them came to visit, they wanted to be able to talk to her. Well this pt was on a vent, pressure sores all over, in her 80's/90's, and was literally rotting away. I have never been so angry as I was when I had to deal with this family. Everything they did was for their comfort or convince and none of it had anything to do with their "loved one". Oh and they only visited once a week. So they kept her in constant pain for a 15 min visit once a week.
This ****** me off too. In my ICU rotation I had a patient, mid stage dementia who had just undergone open heart surgery, was in pain, and the family would not allow pain medications outside of PO APAP because they said the narcotic pain meds only confused her more
WHY wasn't the ethics committee all over this???????????? And why would any physician agree to provide a medical plan of care that doesn't involve proper pain management?????
I know you typed this some months ago so not sure if you'll see this reply, but I have to say, thank God for people like you. I had tears in my eyes reading your story. Nursing is a better profession because you are in it! Well done!
Christy1019, ASN, RN
879 Posts
There's actually a movie put about that book with Julianne Moore as the lead actress. I was thinking of watching it, seems like a good storyline.