A commitment to palliative care. Could it impact assisted suicide?

Assisted Dying and End-of-Life Symptom Management

This qualitative study aimed to describe symptom management strategies oncology nurses have used in responding to and preventing requests of terminally ill patients with cancer for assisted dying (AD). The study involved secondary analysis of written stories from 36 nurses who agreed to describe their experiences with a request for assisted dying. Of the 36 nurses, 12 refused to support patient requests for AD and described their attempts to control the circumstances of dying by controlling symptoms. The remaining 24 nurses denied ever receiving requests for AD and described symptom management practices believed to prevent such requests. Data were analyzed using Denzin's process of interpretive interactionism. Two themes emerged from the participant's stories: alternative strategies for AD and prevention of requests for AD. The participants shared many examples of clinical interventions and other features of nursing responses to relieve or prevent suffering including physical, emotional, and spiritual care practices; comfort and medication management; and service as teacher-advocate. Both the nurses who had received requests for AD and those who had not used a variety of similar symptom management approaches to alleviate suffering. In doing so, these nurses upheld current standards of both their professional and specialty organizations.

Nurses' use of palliative care practices in the acute care setting

This study examines the reported use of palliative care practices by nurses caring for terminally ill patients in the acute care setting. Randomly selected nurses (n = 180) from six randomly selected hospitals in Connecticut completed a self-administered questionnaire. Factors associated with use of palliative care practices were examined by using bivariate and multivariate analyses. Most nurses surveyed (88.5%) reported using palliative care practices when caring for their terminally ill patients. Factors associated with greater use included greater knowledge about hospice, having practiced nursing for less than 10 years, and having had hospice training in the past 5 years. A substantial proportion of nurses reported that they never discuss hospice (51.7 per cent of nurses) and prognosis (26.6 per cent of nurses) with their terminally ill patients. Educational preparation (bachelor's degree versus less education) was not associated with greater use of palliative care practices. Palliative care practices are commonly used by nurses in the acute care setting. However, many report having limited training and substantial gaps in knowledge about hospice among this group of nurses, suggesting greater attention to palliative care and hospice may be warranted in nursing educational programs.

Assisted dying and nursing practice

PURPOSE

Nurses' views are often solicited about physician-assisted dying, a concept that incorporates both assisted suicide and active euthanasia. Yet nurses are rarely asked about their own clinical experience of assisted dying. The literature indicates that many nurses experience difficulty distinguishing professionally sanctioned end-of-life interventions from those that are not. In this article the investigator explores the social, legal, and political roots of assistance in dying, and critically examines the profession's position on nurse participation in assisted dying and the research regarding nurse-assisted dying.

SCOPE

The bioethics and nursing literature was reviewed from 1990 to 1999. The databases used were the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and Medline.

CONCLUSIONS

The complex nature of caring for highly symptomatic dying patients, and the difficulty some nurses experience in distinguishing a moral difference between hastening and assisting death, strongly indicate a need for additional nursing research that does not use a forced answer.

Legalization of assisted suicide. A pilot study of gerontological nurses

1. Legalization of physician-assisted suicide poses serious challenges to the Code for Nurses of the ANA, particularly in the areas of self-determination and autonomy versus sanctity of life. 2. Nurses in this pilot study were divided in their support of legalization of physician-assisted suicide for all ages (46 in favor, 54 opposed) but showed stronger support for legalization when applied to the elderly (58 in favor, 42 opposed). 3. No demographic variables realized statistical significance toward attitudes on the legalization of physician-assisted suicide or its legalization as applied to the elderly. 4. While supported conceptually, the actual practice of physician-assisted suicide was not supported by many who were in favor of legalization of physician-assisted suicide.