In essence, physician-assisted suicide is among the many roles of nurses in the world; this implies that the nurses have the role of making decision based on the consultation with the patients involved. This is mainly because nurses are competent and very well trained on issues concerning the health of their patients. Nurses too are very close to their patients and therefore they are aware of their health status and can assist in coming with decisions regarding physician-assisted suicide practices. The nurses also play the role of counseling particularly to the patients and to their next of kin.
This is a crucial decision before the nurse prescribes the medicine that the patient can use to terminate his life early. Such counselling avoids future implications for instance legal suits taken against nurses because before prescribing the fatal drugs they would have arrived at a mutual decision to do so. Nurses have the role of advising the patients and their families that the particular diseases that the patient suffers from requires physician-assisted suicide in order to avoid further intolerable suffering (Gastmans and VanNeste, 2004).
There has been an increase call for participation of nurses in physician–assisted suicide particularly the patients who are suffering from chronic diseases. Nurses therefore have the key role of understanding the patient’s motives for physician-assisted suicide before prescribing fatal medicine to such patients. Therefore nurses have the role of carrying out mental status assessment of the patient, identifying and treating despair, capitalize on analgesic involvements as well as assessing the peripheral forces on the patient suffering from chronic diseases which calls for administering of physician-assisted suicide practices (Burt, 2005).
However, it should also be noted that nurses have a crucial role of determining the best drugs and dosages to be administered to the patients. Therefore nurses should be well trained and competent in order to have full knowledge on the variety of fatal drugs available for physician-assisted suicide practices. Nurses also do have a role of ensuring that their patient’s rights are not violated but protected; for instance the nurses should respect the decisions of the patients regarding the administering of physician-assisted suicide (Gastmans and VanNeste, 2004).