Authorization and Assist in Writing a Will - Essay Example

Life-preserving technologies have shifted the dynamics of the perceived role of health professionals as they are now increasingly being viewed as persons most suited to care for patients sustaining prolonged diseases. Those patients who suffer from diseases that virtually force them to live terminally ill lives may require assistance in the form of help to end their lives to end the suffering and pain inflicted on them through different diseases. In such cases, patients may be willing to end their lives mostly with the help of their physicians (Sunstein, 1997). The case of Terri Schiavo is one such example that raised a lot of ethical as well as professional questions regarding the supposed role of health professionals in providing assistance to end their lives.

The above-mentioned situation has also given rise to the discussion of whether the patients, who are lucid as well as competent, to decide whether to accept or decline life-sustaining treatments. These discussions have also led to the culmination of the Patient Self Determination Act in 1990 which made it mandatory for hospitals and nursing homes to inform their patients, in advance, regarding the type of treatment they may receive and if patients are unaware of such things, they must be informed regarding the advance directives (Bernal, 2008). This legislation also gave rise to the concept of living will which allowed patients of lucid and competent minds to decide upon the type of life-prolonging treatments to be administrated to them thus ethically upholding patient autonomy (Valente, 2004).

As discussed above that patients with terminal illnesses often seek the help of their physicians to end their lives gives rise to another dimension to the whole argument that whether other health professionals especially nurses should also have a role in assisting patients to write their living will to decide upon choosing the life-prolonging treatments.

The argument of whether to allow nurses to assist patients in writing their will to accept or reject certain life-prolonging treatments need to be viewed from multiple perspectives of ethical, legal as well as professional standards.

It is often argued that ending one’s life either through a living will or otherwise gives rise to the question of the moral beliefs held by society (McMahan, 1993). This question alone put certain ethical restrictions on the more responsible institutions not to be a part of something which has strong moral as well as ethical consequences. Though, living will be a legal document that spells out “the types of medical treatments and life-sustaining measures you do and don't want” (Mayo, 2007) however, it does not necessarily means that hospitals and other health service providers deliberately attempt to assist patients to write their will to live let alone allowing nurses to be part of that.

Though the assistance of nurses may be technical however, given the low level of technical expertise of the nurses, the chances of professional error are much higher as compared to a proper physician therefore assisting a patient in writing a living will prove a wrong decision on the part of nurses due to their relative inexperience and theoretical as well as practical understanding of a particular disease.

Nurses have a legal duty to inform the patients regarding the advance directives and fully educate the patients regarding the life-sustaining mechanisms however, where there is a conflict of will between the patient and those who are involved in the care of patients i.e. physicians, family, etc than nurses have to ensure that no such conflict remain and since conflict remains in most of such cases, therefore, a nurse should only limit herself to the legal role assigned to her by the law under such situations and should not be authorized to assist patients in writing their living will (K. Eland, & Buckwalter, 1996).

Though nurses have a legal role in advance directives, however, their role should not be the one who has the full authorization to assist patients in writing their living will. Their roles should be limited to the roles defined under laws and hospitals should not authorize them to go beyond that in assisting patients to write their living wills.