Many aspects go into creating a quality end of life for a dying patient. It takes teamwork from the medical team and family to achieve a peaceful and comfortable end of life setting. The patient and their families need to prepare themselves for what is to come by coping with feelings of grief, completing legal documents that sort out the patient’s end of life procedures, and picking the right care they wish to receive. Although patients have the option to have their wishes legally written in an advance healthcare directive, one option that patients in the State of Hawaii may not choose is euthanasia. Euthanasia, or otherwise referred to as physicians assisted suicide, is “[t]he voluntary termination of one’s own life by administration of a
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Without the option of physician assisted suicide, when a patient is about to die, medical professional will most likely perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, also known as CPR. The goal of CPR is to keep oxygenated blood circulating in the body, which will help prevent brain and organ damage. This is fine for a healthy normal patient, but patients who are deemed terminally ill will have the experience this painful experience before succumbing to death. During chest compressions, the first step in CPR, health care providers forcefully compress the patient’s chest. This is step is taken to stimulate the heart breathing. However, during chest compressions, the forcible action of pushing on one’s chest causes a sore chest, broken ribs, or in some cases a collapsed lung (Family Doctor). A patient who is diagnosed with advanced cancer and requires CPR, will not likely survive after CPR is performed. This means for the last 10 minutes of this patient’s life, they had to experience their nurse or doctor forcefully compressing their chest for them to survive. Patients who survive the ordeal will need to be placed on breathing machines for an extended period after receiving CPR. Being placed on a breathing machine during your last moments is not a good quality end of life. Ethically speaking, physicians are supposed to have the patient’s best interest in mind when helping them make medical decisions. This means that physicians should be able to offer to the patient a more peaceful and less invasive way to end their life, as to avoid the patient having to suffer an unwanted and painful
Without the option of physician assisted suicide, when a patient is about to die, medical professional will most likely perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, also known as CPR. The goal of CPR is to keep oxygenated blood circulating in the body, which will help prevent brain and organ damage. This is fine for a healthy normal patient, but patients who are deemed terminally ill will have the experience this painful experience before succumbing to death. During chest compressions, the first step in CPR, health care providers forcefully compress the patient’s chest. This is step is taken to stimulate the heart breathing. However, during chest compressions, the forcible action of pushing on one’s chest causes a sore chest, broken ribs, or in some cases a collapsed lung (Family Doctor). A patient who is diagnosed with advanced cancer and requires CPR, will not likely survive after CPR is performed. This means for the last 10 minutes of this patient’s life, they had to experience their nurse or doctor forcefully compressing their chest for them to survive. Patients who survive the ordeal will need to be placed on breathing machines for an extended period after receiving CPR. Being placed on a breathing machine during your last moments is not a good quality end of life. Ethically speaking, physicians are supposed to have the patient’s best interest in mind when helping them make medical decisions. This means that physicians should be able to offer to the patient a more peaceful and less invasive way to end their life, as to avoid the patient having to suffer an unwanted and painful