Contending With Preplanned Death: Questions For Clinicians By Joel Yager

Introduction Death is not a topic that brings a lot of joy to a conversation. The topic of how you will die is not a conversation started. Death, although it is frightening and mysterious is something that will happen to all humans. An article titled Contending with Preplanned Death: Questions for clinicians by Joel Yager ask some of the hard questions regarding death, how people view death, and the methods they would prefer when the times comes. The article asks the following question “how would you like to die’? This brings forth the many places that death could occur but also the general conclusion of how the majority of the population would prefer their death to be a good death. What exactly does that mean? What qualifies as a

The suffering becomes too much and they want a die a peaceful and painless death. In a nationwide study in 2009 these statistics were found about where death occurred, causes of death, final days before death. 34% of deaths occurred in the homes, 25% in acute care hospitals, 25 % in nursing homes and, 42% in hospice care. 9% of patients were on mechanical ventilation within their last 30 days, averaging 2 days on ICU, 7 days in hospice, and 5 days in the hospital (Yager, 2017). The leading cause of death in the United States was found to be 23% heart disease, 23% malignant neoplasms, 6% chronic lower respiratory diseases, 5% unintentional injuries, 5% stroke, 4% the Alzheimer disease, 3% diabetes mellitus, 2% influenza or pneumonia, 2% renal disease , and 2% suicide (Yager,

People may choose euthanasia because they are terminally ill and have little to no hope of getting better but are not dying. There are often in a lot of pain and that pain is often hard to relieve for long periods of time. Most people who decide on euthanasia are of sound mind and choose euthanasia because it allows them to die in peace. Many would rather die in peace than continue to be poked and opened. Euthanasia is a controversial topic in its nature because it is about death. One of my professors once said that there are three things that make people uncomfortable, death, sex, and one more. Because these topics make us uncomfortable we make jokes about it as to ease the tension. Death is a naturally uncomfortable and topic for many it is not surprising that euthanasia is a controversial topic. What makes euthanasia uncomfortable for many is that the patient is choosing to die and that they are receiving help from professionals that are there to prolong one's life. Many also worry that it is a slippery slope for the medical field and that some future patient’s and doctors could misuse the treatment. It has been found that the practice of issuing declarations on euthanasia also know as assisted dying has become as a significant phenomenon within the field of end of life care (Inbadas, Zaman, Whitelaw & Clark, 2017). This means that many at the end of life care field are moving towards the