The Right To Physician Assisted Suicide

Physician-assisted suicide can be described as the act of a terminally ill individual obtaining a lethal prescription in order to exercise their right to die with dignity. Though physician-assisted suicide is highly controversial, it is legally practiced in a small number of states within the United States. Much of the controversy surrounding physician-assisted suicide relates to the social, political, and ethical questions and considerations concerning the practice. Regardless

Did you know, about 57% of physicians today have received a request for physician assisted suicide due to suffering from a terminally ill patient. Suffering has always been a part of human existence, and these requests have been occurring since medicine has been around. Moreover, there are two principles that all organized medicine agree upon. The first one is physicians have a responsibility to relieve pain and suffering of dying patients in their care. The second one is physicians must respect patients’ competent decisions to decline life-sustaining treatment. Basically, these principles state the patients over the age of 18 that are mentally stable have the right to choose to end their life if they are suffering from pain. As of right

Having the option to die with dignity requires many laws that need to be followed in order to go through with it. It is illegal for a physician to assist a patient with suicide without meeting all required criteria; if done, it could result in severe consequences. According to the Death with Dignity National Center, the patient must me 18 years or older, currently a resident or in the process of becoming one, capable of making and communicating health care decisions for themselves, and diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months (2015). If those criteria are met, the process cannot start right away and there is more that needs to be done. The patient needs to verbally request to the physician two times with a 15-day waiting period in between. A written request to the physician is then required and needs to be witnessed by two individuals who are not family members or primary caregivers, usually two other physicians. The patient is able to abrogate their requests at any time and must be able to self-administer their own medication (Death and Dignity National Center, 2015). These laws ensure that there is no chance that the patient is forced to hasten their death. If at any time in the process that the

Proper medical care is needed by all individuals whether they are in good medical condition or not. People should not wait to develop serious medical conditions before visiting the medical centers. Most people live with condition without cure called “terminal illnesses. However, these people have the possibility to prolong their lives through the use of special medication called Palliative. On a Saturday morning, Nancy went to see her doctor because she wasn’t feeling well lately and she had a big lump on her chest, Dr.Sue gave her an assessment. After a few weeks, she received a letter in mail about her recent checkup. “You have a lump on your chest due to the cancer that has been developing”, was written in the letter, She was shocked and she felt horrible. Her daughter wedding is coming up in six months. She wants to spend as much time with her daughter and attend the wedding. However, she doesn’t want aggressive treatment, which would keep her away from home and be hospitalized. She wanted to look happy and healthy at least for her daughter 's wedding. She doesn’t want to go through chemotherapy either, because chemotherapy can have serious effects on her. She learned about palliative care. According to the Palliative Care Organization, Palliative care is a type of care relieves the patient from symptoms, pain and stress related to serious illnesses. According to Meier and McCormick “Palliative care aims to

In the BJ Miller’s video, he discussed about palliative care and shared a story with

A primary role of palliative care is the relief of pain and other physical, psychologist, and emotional symptoms. Patients with advanced diseases such as dementia may be at substantial risk for undetected or undertreated pain. Palliative care interventions can improve the management of pain and other symptoms in patients. Psychosocial, spiritual, and bereavement support are key elements of palliative care. Depression is associated with higher utilization of healthcare services as well as significantly increased mortality rates. Another key element of palliative care is attending to the needs of family members and

Palliation – Reduction of symptoms when cure or control of cancer is not achievable, using surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or biotherapy, to achieve comfort.

Palliative care is a system of holistic care aimed to satisfy the requirements of the chronically ill, typically within their home and community rather than as an in-patient1. Hospice is based on the same principles of care, however, it requires that a patient be deemed with six months or less to live and that life-sustaining treatments be ceased, creating an important distinction between the two. Hospice and palliative care both provide comfort, but hospice is for comfort during end-of-life. Pain and palliative care patients have indicated that receiving that care not only reduced their pain that was once intolerable either completely or to a substantial extent, but it also maintained or increased their hope and outlook on life1. In this country, palliative medicine is a relatively new field of medicine. It wasn’t until 2014 that the WHO began to recognize “palliative and end of life care services as essential and integral to health systems worldwide”2.

“Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.” (who.int, 2014)

Throughout life and individual can experience a myriad of unexpected developments can which can have a dramatic effect on their lifestyle and how they are able to communicate with others. Comorbidities are the multiple appearances of a serious chronic disease like cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cardiovascular disease, or diabetes, which have a negative effect on the patient’s way of life (“Comorbidities”, 2016). In these situations, Health Care providers can recommend palliative care, a specialized form of medicine that works alongside the patient with a team of health care professionals and social workers, to individualize a care plan toward realistic expectation and agreed upon the goals of increasing the patient’s quality of life, relieving pain, and minimizing their disease symptom level (“What is palliative care?,” n.d.). While palliative care can sometimes be mistaken as being synonymous with hospice, the difference between the two is that hospice care relegates patients for whom are actively dying therapeutic treatment and focus on relieving only the patient’s pain and symptoms until their eventual death. The goal of the treatment plan is to work toward managing the patient’s pain and symptoms to an attainable and desired level for a patient when curative treatment is not possible or for patients who are terminally ill but who

According to Cynthia R., of the Journal of Palliative Medicine, “Medical technology has been progressing in leaps and bounds since the second half of the 20th century” (1). This advancement is the result of ongoing studies of medical researchers, bringing about new curative treatments for a variety of diseases. Many of these are extending the lives and increasing comfort of those that are terminally ill. However, amongst the improvements in medical treatments available, they have become the default method of practice even for patients that will not ultimately overcome their condition. When given a diagnosis, patients are often thrust into a variety of treatments by health care providers. However, when that illness is no longer treatable to the extent that the patient will be cured, patients are often kept in the same realm of curative treatments despite their preferences. Hospice and palliative care is a specialized form of medical care that provides terminally ill patients (and their families) with pain management, family planning, and a focus on spiritual and emotional well being in the last days of a patients life, outside of a hospital environment. Hospice and palliative care does not mean that one is necessarily needing to be at an imminent stage before death. Rather, it is the ability of patients with terminal illnesses to receive pain management and care in order to live out the rest of their lives comfortably. Palliative care is said to have, “encouraged medicine to

Palliative care can overlap with life-sustaining approaches to a terminal illness and often palliative care is offered in conjunction with other medical treatments (Billings & Pantilat, 2001; Morrison & Meier, 2004). Palliative care is not curative, the intent is to provide relief from symptoms (both physical and emotional)(Kuziemsky, Jahnke, & Lau, 2006). Many treatments overlap between the palliative and curative models and these disciplines are synergistically linked (Table 1).

According to (WHO, 2009), Palliative care is a way to improve the quality of life for persons and their families to cope with life threatening illness. This is possible to prevent and mitigate suffering through early detection, evaluation and implementation of symptoms related to management of disease and other physical, psychological, social and spiritual. So that the ill persons may come to terms with their deaths as fully and positively as possible (Twycross, R. 1997, p. 2). Palliative care is also regarded as the concept of a "good death," free of avoidable pain and suffering for the person and the person's family (Oliver et al, 2015.The European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) has addressed some of the issue of education and training for palliative

Palliative care is to make patients comfortable and improve their quality of life during the last stage of an illness as well as helping patients to deal with the side effects of the medical treatment that they are receiving instead of prolong life (MedlinePlus, 2017). The symptoms that palliative care treatment doucs on is pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, problems with sleep. Effective palliative cate required a broad multidisciplinary approach that induces the family, and make the community resources available to those who are in need (World Health Organization, 2017).

I have always believed that health cannot be optimized through the treatment of disease only. Rather, health should be addressed on a biological, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual continuum. Palliative care addresses an often-overlooked aspect of the patient experience, which is symptom management of their chronic illnesses. Health care professionals tend to treat acute episodes of