Euthanasia And Assisted Suicide Essay

Looking from a legal perspective, euthanasia and assisted suicide are a slippery slope. There is a fine line between assisting a patient who is suffering from an incurable disease and when the physician could have tried something else but didn 't and then it 's considered a murder. The bigger question is the physicians trained in making this ethical decision of respecting patient autonomy or following their Hippocratic oath of helping and saving patients. "The central moral issues in the euthanasia/PAS debate are whether it is ever right to take one 's own life and whether it is ever right for a physician to take the life of a patient who requests it" (Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, Tampa, Florida, 2001). It has been argued that rather if one type of euthanasia is legalized then other less acceptable forms of euthanasia will also be allowed. Also, if euthanasia or assisted suicide is looked as a last resort and allowed, then rather than trying all the possible cures and interventions people will start using assisted suicide earlier and as a quicker way of ending their plight (Pereira, 2011, p. 40). The Netherlands, where euthanasia has …show more content…
Older patients may worry about becoming a burden to their family at end of life. Patients and families alike can become overwhelmed and make irrational decisions
Even though Registered Nurses in the United States are not allowed to take part in Physician-Assisted Suicide, not all countries follow this rule. In a research study done with physicians and Nurses about PAS and euthanasia, it was found that 40.5% were in favor of euthanasia and 53.5 % supported PAS. In this survey, nurses were more open to assisted suicide but physicians who have a higher level of knowledge in palliative care were more reluctant with Assisted suicide (Zenz, Tryba, & Zenz,