Introduction
Physicians have historically and legally recommended physician-assisted suicide (PAS). PAS occurs when a physician purposefully aids the suicide of a patient by inducing death for someone ailing from an incurable and agonizing sickness (McKinnon & Orellana-Barrios, 2019). In general, PAS happens when a patient self-administers a fatal medicine given by a medical professional through oral intake or lethal injection. Nevertheless, PAS has inherently resulted in controversies in the health sector.
Specifically, some organizations support the PAS administration because they believe it lessens people’s suffering, while others oppose the procedure. Those opposing claim that it generates anxiety for many individuals and continues to elicit intense emotions. However, since PAS is based on safeguarding the sanctity of life, avoiding potential ethical consequences, and emphasizing the necessity of other choices, such as palliative care, nurses should not assist in executing PAS.
Ethical Challenges Presented by Physician-Assisted Suicide
The ethical consequence of PAS is inescapable since it is improper and incorrect. The procedure is unethical since it violates nurses’ Hippocratic Oath of “do no harm” (McKinnon & Orellana-Barrios, 2019). PAS harms patients, which is a violation of the pledge because it is not a therapeutic notion. Furthermore, PAS is a violation of the oath since it might lead to a decline in confidence in the patient-physician relationship because eliminating a human life is regarded as devaluing life itself. As a result, disregarding a human life to reduce the expense of health care or given that pain and terminal diseases are inconvenient, as the idea is that it disdains the worth of life.
Another issue with allowing nurses to do PAS is that it is frequently overused. Given that some nurses perform them incorrectly, the procedure has become incredibly difficult to supervise (Curtin, 2019). Some nurses, for example, have been subjected to possible victim compulsion to undergo PAS, insufficient evaluation of mental health issues, and the prospect of involuntary euthanasia. On the same point, others see it as a chance to make money by overdosing people.
Proponents of physician-assisted suicide, on the other hand, claim that it gives a humane alternative for people suffering from extreme pain and physical degeneration. PAS supporters address this by questioning when the quality of life ceases to be significant. It can be considered a larger good since the physician delivers or recommends medication to the individual to alleviate the patient’s anguish and discomfort (McKinnon & Orellana-Barrios, 2019). This idea, however, is hazy, and instead, the priority and enhancement of palliative care and hospice services will be required to improve patients’ lives. These approaches fundamentally seek to provide complete pain treatment, psychological assistance, and respectful end-of-life care, meeting patients’ medical, mental, and spiritual needs while maintaining the worth of life until it is an inevitable end.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is clear from the above reasoning that nurses should not be permitted to do PAS since it causes more harm than good. PAS raises moral and ethical difficulties since it induces torture of patients, and so violates the Hippocratic Oath. Furthermore, when nurses commit the act, they devalue and dishonor life, which is of the utmost importance. In other cases, practitioners implementing PAS may engage in fraud schemes because they see it as a profit-making procedure. In light of this, all nurses should be prohibited from committing suicide, as arguments such as offering a humane alternative may be refuted by offering palliative care and hospice programs.
References
Curtin, L. (2019). Nurses and assisted suicide. American Nurse. Web.
McKinnon, B., & Orellana-Barrios, M. (2019). Ethics in physician-assisted dying and euthanasia. The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles, 7(30), 36–42. Web.