Pros And Cons Of Physician Assisted Suicide

Assisted suicide or physician assisted suicide more specifically is the act of a medical professional actively giving a terminally ill patient the means with which to end their life. This usually occurs through the prescribing of a lethal dose of a medication, which after dispensed is giving to the patient to administer themselves. The concepts of assisted suicide and euthanasia have been around since the conception of medicine. Terminally ill patients suffering through painful deaths often seek assistance in hastening the inevitable with medical help.1 Medicine has the ability to painless end of suffering of these patients, but the legality and ethics of the issue have been rigorously debated. Should medical professionals be able to, at the …show more content…
This includes physicians, as the physician will be the individual to not only diagnosis the patient as terminally ill, offer all pertinent information and guidance concerning assisted suicide should a patient feel it is an option for them, but the physician would also be the one to prescribe any drugs utilized in the assisted suicide. Nurses working alongside and caring for terminally ill patients considering assisted suicide would also be stakeholders. Pharmacists also represent stakeholders in the issue of assisted suicide, as any medication ordered for the purpose of assisted suicide would be dispensed under the supervision of a pharmacist. Physicians, nurses, and pharmacists are the stakeholders who, except the patient and family, are most directly involved in the issue at hand. Other stakeholders who are perhaps not so directly involved are the medical institutions like hospitals and nursing homes the patients are currently housed in. Law makers and enforcers are also stakeholders, as they have to detail out the protocols for assisted suicide as to prevent abuse and enforce those laws. The public in general may even be considered a stakeholder, as the public has a responsibility to provide protection to vulnerable individuals such as the ill or elderly from neglect and …show more content…
Washington and Vermont require that the physician have the patient inform a next of kin of the request. The entire process is outlined in a timeline, giving all parties ample time to fully think through all of the steps. From the moment of patient first requests assisted suicide, to the moment the prescription is picked up at the pharmacy is all detailed on a timeline. With such a stringent protocol, involving so many different medical professionals, including two doctors, potentially a psychologist, and a pharmacist, it leaves the potential for abuse unlikely. The protocol could always be strengthened, so continued debate over the protocol and the protection it provides should continue.