ipl-logo

Euthanasia Ethical Dilemma

1238 Words5 Pages

One of the biggest ethical dilemmas facing health care providers today is the use of euthanasia, more commonly known as doctor or physician assisted suicide. While this topic has been brought up in many political debates and is frequently found in every day conversations, it is especially prominent among health care providers within the medical field. It is not only an intriguing topic that raises questions for many individuals but it is also a serious ethical question that people in health care and medical professions must consider as the issue is frequently present in much of their work. Many people in these professions work to help save and preserve lives, but they also must comply with a patient’s wishes, so what happens when a patient …show more content…

70). These principles only further add to the questions surrounding this ethical dilemma as to whether or not it is ethical for medical professionals to aid patients in ending their life. If it is the job of health care professionals to do everything in their power to save lives, as these guiding principles suggest, then is it ethically right for them to take a life with euthanasia. However, as Stoyles and Costerie (2013) point out, health care providers have a “legal and professional obligation to follow their patient’s directives” (p. 675). By that standard, one could argue that the health care professional has no choice but to provide the patient with the desired euthanasia. With so many varying duties and ethical views of health care professionals it is important to start looking for solutions or actions we can take to resolve the issue, or to at least work towards finding a middle …show more content…

While there would be people that would argue this goes against a patient’s rights to choose for themselves, if it was not legally an option, then they wouldn’t have it as a choice. If euthanasia was not a legal option that patients had then health care professionals would not be faced with the ethical, and possibly moral dilemma over whether or not providing a patient with euthanasia goes against any ethical guidelines to preserve and save lives. Health care professionals could instead focus on administering medication that would help to ease a patient’s pain and work to make them as comfortable as

Show More
Related
157 Words | 1 Pages

Today’s medical staff faces ethical dilemmas that are more perplexing, challenging, and controversial than ever before. As medical technology develops and we create more ways and machines that serve to prolong life, we face the legal and ethical debates over quality of life, patient autonomy, professional integrity, beneficence, social consequences, nonmaleficence, and the definition of death itself. Raising more ethical, moral, and practical issues than any other issue is physician assisted suicide. Physician assisted suicide is the provision of the means of ending his or her own line with the assistance of a medical professional. Arguments in defense of and in opposition to assisted death have traditionally been centered on the same bioethical

Read More
1869 Words | 8 Pages

Physician-Assisted Suicide and its Ethical Dilemma Alexandra N. Gionta California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Physician-Assisted Suicide and its Ethical Dilemma Introduction As an aspiring nurse in California, an ethical dilemma that I am likely to come across is that involved with patient euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS). In voluntary active Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, a doctor administers a treatment upon request of the patient that will initiate their tranquil death. This is usually done in the case that the patient is of a certain age and diagnosed with a terminal illness that causes them suffering. A common misconception is that PAS is the same as euthanasia, but there is a distinct difference between the two.

Read More
739 Words | 3 Pages

Physician-assisted suicide is a widely controversial issue that is discussed in today society. There are debates over whether it is ethically correct or whether assisted suicide should be legalized for the terminally ill. Each side of the arguments have different viewpoints concerning individual aspects of physician-assisted suicide. Such as certain guidelines that should exist if legalized. Advocates of physician-assisted suicide argue that it should be legal under circumstances such as great suffering through terminals illness.

Read More
1246 Words | 5 Pages

Commentary On A Medical Dilemma Physician-assisted suicide is a large moral controversy in the medical field. Jukka Varelius explains the key points about the dilemma on whether medical patients should have the right to ask doctors to terminate their lives, in order to end their suffering. In “Voluntary Euthanasia, Physician-Assisted Suicide, and the Right to do Wrong”, the author addresses how assisting suicide is morally wrong in our society, but yet patients insist that they have the moral right to end their lives if they are in agony and facing significant torment due to their ill status. Jukka, in his point of view, outlines the multiple problems that go along with the main conflict, such as should a doctor be forced to end a suffering patient’s life even if the physician does not wish to do so and should the patient have the ability to ask for euthanasia even if there is still a possibility that the patient’s status can improve. Mr. Varelius does a successful job portraying the key points in this conflict, but does not strongly support any side in the

Read More
1647 Words | 7 Pages

Do physicians have a higher moral code than the average person? Will they always do the right thing? Many might say yes, but are physicians not human too? Physician-assisted suicide can promote an end to a patient’s suffering when there is no hope of getting better. While The process of ending life during a terrible suffering can be beneficial, the risks of malpractice can be too great to allow.

Read More
509 Words | 3 Pages

Doctors control the means, drugs that end life painlessly” (Jaret). Doctors hold the key, to end patients suffering it should be legal for doctors to help patients and patients should also have the right to make a decision that has to do with ending their life. According to Issues and Controversies “The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain and embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction of history and is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” (“Right to Die”). Patients have the right as citizens to have a say in the way they want to have a death on their own terms. Nobody should be withholding the right to die from a patient who is mentally competent and terminally ill (“Right to

Read More
781 Words | 4 Pages

Physician-assisted Suicide and Ethical Principles The responsibility a physician has to his patients and society is established by medical ethics and is at a greater degree than the law (Sulmasy & Mueller, 2017). The ethical principles, beneficence, autonomy, nonmaleficence, and promotion of fairness and social justice, are the basis for a physician’s duties to his patients. He is a member of a profession with ethical obligations; he is not just a service provider, but a moral advocate. Both medical ethics and the law support the patient’s right to refuse therapy.

Read More
1118 Words | 5 Pages

Though these professionals surely sympathize with their suffering patients, they must not be forced or allowed by law or by the patient or by the patient’s family to end life. Physician assisted suicide should not be legal in the United States because some illnesses, though detrimental to the body causing individuals to wish for death, can be treated, because it

Read More
532 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
690 Words | 3 Pages

We know that the role of the doctor is always to save a patient’s live. What if the only way to save save a suffering patient’s life is their death. The highest ethical imperative of doctors should be to provide care in whatever way best serves patients' interests, in accord with each patient's wishes, not with a theoretical commitment to preserve life no matter what the cost in suffering.... The greatest harm we can do is to consign a desperate patient to unbearable suffering—or force the patient to seek out a stranger like Dr. Kevorkian.(2004)

Read More
788 Words | 4 Pages

Moreover, witnessing the decline and suffering of the dying person is distressing for both the family and physicians. However, choosing to end a life through physician-assisted suicide (PAS) can bring added grief to the family, and for the medical community, feelings of guilt for violating the Hippocratic Oath’s dictum of ‘First, do no harm.’ Decriminalizing physician-assisted suicide obliterates this long-held ethical tenant. For this reason, in a poll of more than 5,000 physicians, 82% stated physician-assisted suicide should not be legal (New England Journal of Medicine, 2013). Certainly, supporters of euthanasia point out it is a physician’s duty to treat pain and suffering; however, to prescribe death as a reasonable treatment undermines the role of the physician as a

Read More
1252 Words | 6 Pages

Assisted suicide is a rather controversial issue in contemporary society. When a terminally ill patient formally requests to be euthanized by a board certified physician, an ethical dilemma arises. Can someone ethically end the life of another human being, even if the patient will die in less than six months? Unlike traditional suicide, euthanasia included multiple individuals including the patient, doctor, and witnesses, where each party involved has a set of legal responsibilities. In order to understand this quandary and eventually reach a conclusion, each party involved must have their responsibilities analyzed and the underlying guidelines of moral ethics must be investigated.

Read More
1156 Words | 5 Pages

The term Euthanasia means dying well or a good death (Lee and Stingl 1). People may think if the physician helps patients die well, then they are doing what is good for the patient. Euthanasia then becomes a greater ethical issue for the physicians, because how do the doctors decide who qualifies for Euthanasia? Euthanasia is considered so ethically wrong that medical ethics have rejected it (Requena 100). The physician should uphold their oath and not be considered as an option in helping patients commit

Read More
946 Words | 4 Pages

For medical staff to make sure a patient does not leave this world with indignities done, we should be able to do what needs to be done for the person to make them comfortable, even that means their decision is to die via assisted suicide. If we know a the patient is suffering from pain or has become depressed for a reason that their dignity has been wronged (Allmark 255). In summarization, assisted suicide should be a pro choice. Many people do not want to

Read More
960 Words | 4 Pages

Euthanasia is “a concept used in the medical field which means easy death or gentle death, and is defined as the deliberate speeding up of the death of an individual based on terminal medical conditions” (Jonsen, et al. 2015). Euthanasia reflects one of the current debate issues health professionals encounter when caring for the end of life patients who are choosing between speeding up their death or living the rest of their life in pain. In the fields of laws and regulations related to human health there is still a controversy over the concept of a peaceful death. This ethical dilemma has health care providers making a decision to choose between two difficult options and are obligated to use moral reasoning to solve these legal and ethical

Read More

More about Euthanasia Ethical Dilemma

Related Topics

Open Document