Involuntary euthanasia involves conducting a procedure that will hasten the death of a patient who is competent enough to express his wishes with regards to how he wants to be taken care of (Manninen, 2008). Since the patient did not ask to be euthanized and yet this procedure was performed without informing the patient that it will be conducted on him, then involuntary euthanasia was conducted in this scenario. In other medical situations, a patient has lost the ability to let his family or his physician know his last wishes with regards to his care in the hospital.
This loss in communication skills is often associated with neurological conditions such as stroke, wherein a hemorrhage in the brain may block certain regions in the cerebrum that are associated with speech (Hertogh, 2009). In this situation, the patient is in a comatose condition and it is common for a patient to gradually deteriorate through the weeks or months. Other medical conditions that involve the loss of communication include patients that have been diagnosed with serious mental health conditions and these patients are unable to express what they want.
In the neonatal wards, newborn babies have not yet acquired the ability to speak and thus it is difficult to determine whether these very young patients are suffering when they are diagnosed with a chronic medical condition or congenital abnormality (Martens, 2008). Euthanasia may be conducted through different means. The administration of a highly toxic chemical to a patient in order to induce death is considered as active euthanasia. On the other hand, the discontinuation of a particular treatment that is considered as critical to the life of a patient is categorized as passive euthanasia.
Another form of passive euthanasia is the refusal of a healthcare professional to provide the patient a particular treatment, with the knowledge that the discontinuation of this treatment will eventually result in the patient’s death. One prime example of passive euthanasia is the disconnection of the life support system of a patient whose main mechanism for breathing is the respirator. There are other terms that are commonly interchanged to refer to the concept of euthanasia, such as physician-assisted suicide and mercy killing.
The procedure of withholding treatment is also another phrase that refers to euthanasia. In the case of physician-assisted suicide, the patient requests that his life be ended because of the extreme suffering he is experiencing. In turn, the physician attending to the patient provides a lethal drug that the patient himself could take at his own accord (Materstvedt et al. , 2003). For withholding treatment, the decision is terminating a particular treatment is made by the physician and this is mainly based on the observation that any further procedures may not augment the medical condition of the patient.
However, it is also possible that the decision regarding withholding further treatment of the patient may also come from the patient or the members of the patient’s immediate family. It has been established that the common cause of deciding on taking the route involving withholding further treatment is that any additional treatments were observed to be futile. ETHICAL ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH EUTHANASIA Euthanasia is regarded as a controversial issue because it involves several aspects in the life and values of a human being.
Most physicians actually support the implementation of euthanasia in their medical profession (De Vries and Verhagen, 2008). On the other hand, there are certain countries and even particular states that would reject and even attempt to abolish current legislations that allow the use of euthanasia in routine medical cases. For example, an Australian act that upholds the rights of a patient that is deemed to be in a terminal condition was abolished in 1997. In the United States, the act that supports death in a dignified way, or simply known as euthanasia, was disallowed in 1999 (Miller et al.
, 2004). These two abolished acts were thus abolished due to the realization that euthanasia does indeed violate ethical issues. Euthanasia is considered as a contentious issue because it involves ending the life of a patient simply based on a request made by the patient, the family members or the physician himself. However, it is important that the concept of euthanasia be reviewed at greater detail in order to understand why and how such state of desperation to die was reached. Analyses of several cases of euthanasia have shown that there are several possible answers to this question.
It is important to understand that euthanasia is considered an option when the patient unceasingly experiences pain that is related to his chronic medical condition. It is thus possible that the patient was not receiving the proper palliative care that was necessary for his medical condition, and thus he could feel extreme discomfort, as well as pain, during the entire ordeal (Vansweevelt, 2008). On the other hand, it is also possible that the physician did not fully look into the well-being of the patient because he knows that he could always conduct euthanasia should the need arises (Chong and Fok, 2009).
Another possible condition that pushes a patient to request for euthanasia is the presence of an additional medical condition or co-morbidity. The occurrence of co-morbidity among chronically ill patients is common and unfortunately, the patient doubly suffers in these situations (Woien, 2008). For example, a patient positively diagnosed with cancer may also experience depression because this medical condition is usually regarded at extremely difficult to treat. In addition, the battery of treatments and tests that are conducted on a cancer patient further pushes this individual to feel helpless and eventually, hopeless.
It has been reported in several medical investigations that patients who are categorized at the terminal stages of their disease are more susceptible to reach the stage of frustration and desperation, and this can be observed through the personal request to their doctor or nurse to end his suffering as soon as possible. Given these two possible scenarios, it is thus imperative to identify that causative factor for the patient’s suffering, whether it is due to poor palliative care or due to the chronic disease itself.