The Pros And Cons Of Assisted Suicide

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of citizens over the age of 65 in the United States is over 38 Million as of 2008. As our population grows older, more and more patients and healthcare workers will face with tough decisions that come with death. As those people come to face those decisions, there are several ethical issues that are faced by the patient, their families, and healthcare team providing care to the geriatric patient. To have a better understanding of medical ethics, we must define the four pillars. According to Mohanti (2009), the foundation of medical ethics is supported by four pillars, these include; autonomy – the patient's right to choose or refuse treatment, beneficence – the best interests of the patient

According to Tabloski (2013, p. 270) Assisted suicide is “a clinician’s act of providing a means of suicide, such as medication, a prescription, information, or other intervention, to a patient, knowing the patient’s intent to commit suicide.” and Euthanasia is the “ act or practice of killing hopelessly sick or injured individuals in a relatively painless way (mercy killing)”. Both are illegal in most parts of the world. In the United States in Oregon, Washington, and Montana however, physician assisted suicide is legal. This presents an interesting dilemma. While many “patients with advanced disease who are suffering from physical and emotional pain, functional declines, and multiple losses may express a desire for hastened death” (Hudson et al., 2006), it is fundamentally against the nature of nursing to assist in any way with physician assisted suicide or euthanasia. In fact in the Nightingale Pledge that every nurse takes, it says that the nurse will not “knowingly administer any harmful drug” (ANA). Also, according to the ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses, nurses “may not act with the sole intent of ending a patient’s life even though such action may be motivated by compassion, respect for patient autonomy, and quality of life considerations” (ANA, 2013). So when does this become an issue of autonomy when a patient that can make their own decisions, expresses that they wish to have a physician assisted suicide or have euthanasia and is denied their wish? As of now, we legally do not have the power to say so. We are to follow the law and if the law changes, then we must look inside ourselves and figure out where we stand in our own morals and values. Patient education in these situations is key. If the desire to die is a result of pain, patients should be educated that most pain can be controlled with the proper plan. If the pain