Assisted Suicide Ethical Dilemma

Death is unnerving. However, to those fighting unwinnable battles death may seem to be the only way to escape the pain. For the patients in agonizing situations, nurses are there to provide comfort and care. The patient and nurse form a unique relationship and, therefore, the nurse is typically the first person a patient deliberates the topic of assisted suicide with (Maher, 2007). This issue has been strongly deliberated since 1997 when Oregon passed a law termed the Death With Dignity Act. In 2006 Washington, Montana, and Vermont also passed bills approving assisted suicide, and since 2014 twenty-eight additional states have considered implementing bills that would allow physicians to assist in patients ending their lives. Typically, assisted suicide has remained in the domain of physicians, however, in the scope of nursing practice, it is still an issue that has a prominent effect on nurses and weighs heavily on their minds. The ethical principles in regard to this topic are deeply intertwined creating an intricate ethical dilemma for nurses. The question has become where do nurses fit into the equation of assisted suicide.

They are there to listen, console, and care for a patient, often receiving private and sensitive information, in a patient’s most vulnerable and desperate moment. This also means that they may be encountered with a patient’s request to end their life. Assisted suicide is an issue that directly contradicts nursing ethical principles and places the nurse in a compromising situation. Not allowing the patient this choice would oppose the patients right for autonomy, denying them the ultimate decision in their life. However, allowing them the decision would defy the nurse’s responsibility of caring in regards to beneficence, to do only good, and nonmaleficence, to do no harm (Maher,