Morality of Physician-Assisted Suicide
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Introduction
There are times when a person has or will suffer an intense medical experience. This can be in the form of a terminal disease or accident. The patient’s outcome will more than likely be bad. They might be paralyzed, disfigured, or slowly wasting away. We have the means to help end this suffering. However, these means are often at odds with our promise to provide care and restore some sort of quality of life. This dilemma will be the focus of this discussion question.
Unit Learning Outcomes
ULO1: Evaluate the application of physician-assisted suicide in a medical situation (CLO 1, 2, and 4).
ULO2: Identify the ethical issues associated with physician-assisted suicide (CLO 1, 2, and 4).
Directions
Initial Posting
You are the Deputy Chief of Staff for BigRiver Trauma Center. You have been asked by the family and providers to render an opinion on the following case:
Janice Coldwater is a 25 year old woman. She was badly burned in a car accident while traveling with her brother to St Augustine, Florida. She was in a vehicle that had flipped. The car was quickly engulfed in flames. She was trapped in the burning car for 2 minutes. She had 3rd and 4th degree burns covering 95 percent of her body. While being prepped for the ride to the hospital, she asked several times for the responders to “let her die”. She has been in the burn unit for 3 months. She is suffering from the most agonizing pain that many on the unit have witnessed. The only way to alleviate her pain is to sedate her but this will result in her death. She is awake and aware that she has lost her ears, nose, fingers, and has limited use of her legs. She will have continual problems with her kidneys, livers, and lungs if she survives. The patient and family want to sedate her to ease the pain and are willing to take the chance she will die. The medical team doesn’t want to take that risk. Prepare an email to the head of her care team indicating if the sedative should be given or withheld. Be sure to provide a rationale for your reason. Also be sure to provide other alternatives that might be palatable to both sides. Be sure to include some comment on if this constitutes physician- assisted suicide.
The initial posting should be prepared as a Microsoft™ Word document, and then pasted into the unit discussion thread. There is no minimum or maximum in terms of the word count; however, the response should explicitly address all required components of this discussion assignment. The document should be prepared as a practical business deliverable (single-spaced) and reflect higher-level cognitive processing (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation).
Support the initial posting with at least 3 references of credible or peer-reviewed sources. The in-text citations and the list of references should be consistent with the APA writing style (7th ed.). To earn the maximum number of points for the initial posting, the overall quality of the writing should be consistent with that expected of a college student and industry professional.
