Palliative Sedation

Patients at the end of life may experience a continuum of symptoms that are often characterized as unendurable or refractory to aggressive symptom management (Beel, McClement, & Harlos, 2002). Symptoms of this nature can include uncontrolled pain, nausea, vomiting, agitation, dyspnea, and a specific form of delirium that manifests itself in the last hours or days of life. This delirium, also known as terminal delirium, causes intractable restlessness, confusion, and hallucinations. Palliative care teams have noted that it is not only the patient who suffers, but that the families of such patients seem anxious, frightened and emotionally burdened bearing witness to their loved one’s suffering (Brajtman, 2005). Palliative sedation or terminal sedation is defined as the intentional use of medications to sedate a patient to near unconsciousness or total unconsciousness until death in order to alleviate refractory symptoms associated with the end of life (Bruce & Boston, 2011). This medical treatment is not without criticism, and has frequently been linked to physician assisted suicide or euthanasia (Battin, 2008). The claim of this narrative is that palliative sedation should be considered as a medical treatment for dying patient’s that are …show more content…
Physician assisted suicide is when someone enlists the help of medical personnel in order to perform the act of taking one’s life. The best example of this would be a patient who requests a lethal dose of medication. Euthanasia, however, is when the physician performs the terminal act, as in a lethal injection (Parker et al., 2011). Because the end point in all three of the listed medical interventions is patient death, those who oppose palliative sedation claim that the acts are ultimately the same. Fortunately, the ethical argument that renders palliative sedation legal speaks to this