Palliative care is a multidisciplinary approach to specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses that focus on relief from an illness’ associated symptoms, pain, physical stress, and mental stress of a serious illness, no matter what the diagnosis is (Materstvedt, 2003). This kind of care can address and potentially change many of the factors involved in individual request for assisted suicide by providing respect, careful attention, and open and sensitive communication in the clinical setting, aiming to ease the worries that patients may have surrounding their illness and future with the illness.
Complications Regarding Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide and Potential Ethical Implications The primary argument against the …show more content…
Opponents to the legalization of doctor-mediated death commonly cite the “slippery slope” principal (Young, 2015) that suggests permitting assisted suicide would be to risk potential patient abuse. People who would normally deserve assistance and care in the face of terminal illness instead may be offered accelerated death to avoid resource expenditures. This careless treatment of patients can eventually lead to an overall corruption of medical practice, preserving incentives for insurance providers and jeopardizing appropriate public and private financing of health care. Physician-assisted suicde, then, would be a cheap and quick fix in a world of increasingly scarce health resources. In turn, this may lead to the development of temptations to view the elderly or the disabled as burdens, as well as the temptation for the elderly or disabled to internalize this stigma and view themselves as burdens, propelling the cycle of increased physician-assisted suicide. Other complications from legalizing physician-assisted suicide would be the need to spend a lot of time and resources on the education of physicians and other health-care providers about physician-assisted …show more content…
It is essential to examine all options and discussion regarding the matter, because although physician-assisted suicide can potentially be a very rewarding experience for a patient and their family as well as allows the dying patient control over their life, there is as much reason for it to be a wholly immoral act. However, discussion of end-of-life decisions need not stop at whether or not physician-assisted suicide should be legalized. Instead, it should be extended to the concept of palliative care. Improved care at end-of-life may be enough to both hypothetically change certain motivations and factors for the desire for assisted suicide, but also addresses the positive points of the argument for physician-assisted suicide without promoting assisted
Complications Regarding Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide and Potential Ethical Implications The primary argument against the …show more content…
Opponents to the legalization of doctor-mediated death commonly cite the “slippery slope” principal (Young, 2015) that suggests permitting assisted suicide would be to risk potential patient abuse. People who would normally deserve assistance and care in the face of terminal illness instead may be offered accelerated death to avoid resource expenditures. This careless treatment of patients can eventually lead to an overall corruption of medical practice, preserving incentives for insurance providers and jeopardizing appropriate public and private financing of health care. Physician-assisted suicde, then, would be a cheap and quick fix in a world of increasingly scarce health resources. In turn, this may lead to the development of temptations to view the elderly or the disabled as burdens, as well as the temptation for the elderly or disabled to internalize this stigma and view themselves as burdens, propelling the cycle of increased physician-assisted suicide. Other complications from legalizing physician-assisted suicide would be the need to spend a lot of time and resources on the education of physicians and other health-care providers about physician-assisted …show more content…
It is essential to examine all options and discussion regarding the matter, because although physician-assisted suicide can potentially be a very rewarding experience for a patient and their family as well as allows the dying patient control over their life, there is as much reason for it to be a wholly immoral act. However, discussion of end-of-life decisions need not stop at whether or not physician-assisted suicide should be legalized. Instead, it should be extended to the concept of palliative care. Improved care at end-of-life may be enough to both hypothetically change certain motivations and factors for the desire for assisted suicide, but also addresses the positive points of the argument for physician-assisted suicide without promoting assisted