Health Sciences and Medicine - Essay Example

Final Research Paper Introduction The medical practitioners attending to the patients have very radical views that are essentially guided by the provisions and regulations governing their daily practice. The case’s caregivers have the full awareness of the facts surrounding the patients’ ailments. Further, it is essential to appreciate the fact that all forms of decisions that are involved with the patient’s treatment need to be well thought and established. This way, the doctor realizes that the proposals and pleas raised by the patients about the concerns for these procedures are wanting. At this point, the doctor seeks to have the opinion of the ethics committee to avoid making a decision that will be later termed to be physician aided suicide. This would be in great breach of the medical practice and regulations provisions. The medical attendant in the patient’s case is concerned that their relatives had a history of depression further integrated with an attempt of suicide which all does not form a desirable decision therein. This paper intends to confirm the relevance of physician-assisted suicide while identifying how it has a relationship to my professional and academic pursuits. This will deliver a review on the feedback within the topic choice as presented in the peer discussions. In practice, they need to identify and seek more alternatives and opportunities towards demonstrating their long lasting commitment to families and patients within the provisions of the professional practice. All efforts need to be pointing at the programs implementation with respect to palliative care in better managing chronic as well as severe spiritual and bio-psycho-social distress which increase life suffering and continue limiting the quality of life. Finally, all medical practitioners need to embrace the obligation of compassionately listening to patients requests even though they need to recognize the acceptable ethical practice boundaries. This involves acknowledging the due prohibition against overall participation in any form of assisted suicide which does not necessarily lower the conflict and distress a medical official feels when encountering such a patients request. Annotated Bibliography Inghelbrecht E., Bilsen J., Mortier F., Deliens L., (2010) The Role Of Nurses In Physician-Assisted Deaths In Belgium: Canadian Medical Association Or Its Licensors. JUNE 15, 182(9) The authors observe that even though the patient could be autonomous with due respect to the motives of alleviating the pain, there are good cases to claiming that doubling the medication would not serve in the best interests of the autonomy. This is on the fact that aspects to the patient will involve doubling the medication and not serving as a way of ending it as autonomously motivated to achieve. The article reveals that all autonomous agents need to have true beliefs with respect to the relationship existing between such ends through which they are well motivated to attain. The lack of these kinds of true beliefs will make agents appear to lack several things that are necessary for effectively acting in pursuit of the ends and their autonomy. This is compared to the mere alleviation of her pain through doubling the level of medication that could be certainly bad for the health condition. The main reason that lack of information by the patient here appears crucial is that, for the purposes of being autonomous, it is not prudent for agents to be autonomous simply on the grounds of their motives. Perry D., (2011) Battlefield Euthanasia: Should Military Mercy-Killings Be Allowed? White paper Presented at the International Society for Military Ethics annual meeting, 27. The articles insists that the individuals are opposing any approaches aimed at permitting assisted suicide observe that the society bears the moral responsibility of protecting and preserving all life. Allowing people to assist other people in having to destroy their individual lives is well in violation of such fundamental duty to respect human life. Societies committed to the preservation and protection of life need not commission individuals into destroying it. Further, an opposing opinion in this respect claims that the society also has the duty of rejecting all legislation that poses potential threats to the sanctity of lives belonging to innocent persons. Increasingly, laws sanctioning assisted suicide will inevitably pose such threats. The authors conclude that the concern of the kind of breed that people will develop into once they sign requests to die and later change their minds due to their conditions will make it rather hard to make their wishes known. The presentation argues that the sanctioning of physician-assisted suicide is in violation of other people’s rights. Doctors, as well as nurses, could continuously find themselves facing pressured towards cooperating with a patients suicide. Pickert, K., (2009) Assisted Suicide. Time Inc. retrieved on 30th June 2014 from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1882684,00.html Pickert illustrates that this practices supporters have a general trend towards legalizing assisted suicide claiming that all individuals are entitled to a moral right on an individual basis freely to choose what they need to do with their own lives in that it does not impact harm on others. This aspect of free choice also includes the right to end an individual’s life when need is. In most cases, the right to end life is part of the fundamental rights which they may choose easily to exercise. The article affirms that, there are many people wishing to die even though their diseases, handicapped state as well as other conditions render them incapable of ending their lives in substantially dignified ways. Further, it is debated that even other people have the sole obligation of relieving the suffering of fellow human beings as well as respecting their dignity. Lying in hospital beds today are persons who are afflicted with terminal conditions and excruciatingly painful diseases which have left them incapable of functioning permanently in any form of dignified human perspective. They are able to solely look forward to lives which are full of more suffering, deterioration, and degradation. When these people beg for merciful ends to such indignity and pain, proponents of this observe that it is rather inhumane and cruel to refuse their pleas. Acts of compassion will demand that fellow people fully comply and cooperate. Seale C., (2009) End-of-life decisions in the UK involving medical practitioners. Palliat Med; 23:198-204. Seale states that the legal provisions make it unlawful for physicians or any other health care providers to engage in an offense of physician-assisted suicide through prescribing drugs, compounds, or various substances to patients where the express intention is intentionally assisting to end the patient’s life. This may also be categorized as any assistance to any medical procedure where the fundamental purpose is to assist the patient to end the patient’s life intentionally. Specifically, these include a focus on the defined limits such as voluntary euthanasia; self-deliverance and physician-assisted suicide and improved palliative care coupled with equitable access to resources for individuals with unbearable suffering. Seale adds that assisted suicide is a situation in which individuals help other people voluntarily to bring about their own death. Assistance means the provision of the means (either equipment or drugs) for purposes of ending ones life even though it could extend to other actions. In my opinion, assisted suicide should be permitted in any way or form. One of the reasons is that it completely demeans the human life value. In this context, human life has a lot of meanings. For every death, there are up to 1-2 days of elaborate burials, ceremonies, and months of mourning. For all of them, people are profound in constant mourning especially with the annual anniversaries of such events. In subsequent communities across the world, life is not expressly sacred. It is for this reason that wars are constantly fought for disputed old grudges and territories. Human life is comprehensively meaningful and should not be considered as a simple cluster of biological cells. Van Bruchem-van de Scheur GG, van der Arend AJ, Abu-Saad HH, et al. (2008) The role of medical professionals in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in The Netherlands. J Med Ethics; 34:254-8. The authors understand that there are factors that influence the physicians attitudes of towards assisted death. Issues of religion, gender, religiosity, and age, previous experience with euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, as well as work environment, are composite factors that in turn influence the attitudes of health professionals towards the overall approaches of physician-assisted death. Studies conducted across the world with respect to end-of-life treatment report outcomes which indicate that those with the high likelihood of rejecting death include the older, female, Catholic and western-educated. The article directs that it is on these grounds that physicians identifying themselves as professionals in palliative care appear to be less willing to offer due support to the physician-assisted death practice. The ones who have a prior engagement in such behavior are more likely freely to respond to surveys that they perceive to be passive with respect to assisted suicide through deliberate omission of life-preserving equipment or drugs. In my opinion, medical professionals have the opportunity of creating environments in which patients are able to feel more comfortable in expressing their individual thoughts, feelings, conflict, as well as despair. This means that issues that surround requests for any form of assisted suicide that need to be collectively explored with the individual patients, as well as the appropriate consideration of the family and team members. It becomes crucial certainly to acknowledge all the expressions of sadness, hopelessness and suffering. If possible, all factors contributing to the request need to be alleviated among the existing patient resources and strengths which are specially promoted and relied on. Bibliography Inghelbrecht E., Bilsen J., Mortier F., Deliens L., (2010) The Role Of Nurses In Physician-Assisted Deaths In Belgium: Canadian Medical Association Or Its Licensors. JUNE 15, 182(9) Perry D., (2011) Battlefield Euthanasia: Should Military Mercy-Killings Be Allowed? White paper Presented at the International Society for Military Ethics annual meeting, 27. Pickert, K., (2009) Assisted Suicide. Time Inc. retrieved on 30th June 2014 from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1882684,00.html Seale C., (2009) End-of-life decisions in the UK involving medical practitioners. Palliat Med;23:198-204. Van Bruchem-van de Scheur GG, van der Arend AJ, Abu-Saad HH, et al. (2008) The role of medical professionals in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in The Netherlands. J Med Ethics; 34:254-8. Read More