Physician Assisted Suicide

Most people are concerned about the terminally ill patient's competence when it comes to assisted suicide. A substantial number of terminally sick people in their latter phases of life have asked doctors to assist them in dying. Yet, competent terminally ill adults should not be allowed to request physician-assisted suicide since it causes unnecessary stress for the providers who must perform it and is unethical because providers will be assisting in the taking of life.

The right to assisted suicide is a contentious issue that affects people all around the United States. Apparently, the debates revolve around the issue as to whether or not a dying person has the right to die using a physician’s assistance. Some people are against this because of the moral, as well as religious reasons, while others support it due to their respect and sympathy for the patient who is dying. Nevertheless, it is imperative to establish whether or not a patient in pain should be assisted to die.

Ethical Position

The people who support the issue of the patient, who is terminally ill, being in a position to ask for assisted suicide point out that such individual; have the right to terminate their own lives in some cases (Cotton, 2015). Since the physician-assisted suicide is not legal in many states, the supporters of this practice maintain that most of the patients are not able to obtain assistance required to terminate their lives and they have to put up with extreme suffering and pain involuntarily.

On the other hand, those who do not support the issue of assisted suicide have presented an argument that legally allowing this to happen would bring about abuse (Jones & Paton, 2015). On this line, they maintain that legalizing assisted suicide would result in killing patients who may not be wishing to die. For instance, these opponents point out that family members or influential physicians may convince patients to accept to die (Spoerri, et al., 2013). Moreover, the gluttonous insurance firms may put pressure on the physicians to control the insurance costs by bringing the patient’s life to an end prematurely.

My position is that as much as assisting someone to die may help him or her to stop from going through unnecessary pain, no one is allowed to take another person’s life. Indeed, this is unethical and immoral. I support the idea that allowing assisted suicide may lead to unnecessary deaths. Moreover, allowing this can put unnecessary stress to the physicians as they struggle not to violate their code of ethics.

Nursing Recommendations

Fundamentally, it is imperative for the physicians to act ethically and avoid assisting people to die. Moreover, in case the patients are in pain, the physicians can use other means to reduce pain by using particular drugs, rather than encouraging assisted suicide.

Conclusion

From the analysis, it is evident that competent terminally ill adults should not be allowed to ask for physician assisted suicide because of unnecessary stress to the providers who have to do it, and it is unethical because providers will be assisting in taking away life. Although some people claim that assisted suicide helps patients to overcome pain, this is an illegal and immoral practice. No human being is supposed to be allowed to take another person’s life.

References

Cotton, P. (2015). Medicine’s Position Is Both Pivotal and Precarious in Assisted Suicide Debate. The Journal of the American Association, 31(2), 363-64.

Jones, D. A. & Paton D. (2015). How Does Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide Affect Rates of Suicide? Southern Medical Journal, 108(10), 599-605.

Spoerri, A., Zwahlen M., & Bopp M. (2013). Religion and assisted and non-assisted suicide in Switzerland: National Cohort Study. Int J Epidemiol 10(39),1486-1494.