When thinking about death with dignity I have always thought that patients should have the right to decide when they want to withdraw from treatment but deciding specifically when and how they die is an interesting subject. I was unaware that medically assisted death was legal in the United States, especially in Maine. I know how difficult it is to watch a family member suffer through terminal illness and knowing every day that their death inevitable, but I could not imagine assisting in their death. Comfort measures only is a concept that I am much more familiar with and have seen in person so if a nurse were to give morphine, for example, to control a patient’s pain and that resulted in their death I would be okay with it, but to purposefully use drugs to end a patient’s life I am unsure if I agree. I believe patients and their families have the right to choose the path of their care, but I felt prior to the readings that I would need more information on the rules behind medically assisted death before saying if I agree or disagree.
After completing the videos and readings, my beliefs behind death with dignity have been challenged. As a nurse you agree to provide care by doing no harm, and prior to the videos I would have said medically assisted care was doing harm. I am not sure that I think that anymore. As I said above, I have seen a family member go through chemo and slowly deteriorate little by little until they don’t even seem like the same person anymore. In the moment you want to do anything and everything you can to save them and make them better even though you know that saving them is not possible. It may make you feel better that you have exhausted all your options, but in the process the treatments and drug therapies are making your loved one go through therapies that they may not want. With medically assisted death or death with dignity, that loved one can make the choice to pass without completely losing who they are first. You won’t have to see them lose the ability to walk or talk until they are just a shell of a person. Like Brittany Maynard, the terminally ill person can make the decision to end their life before they lose who they are in the dying process. I think that is a right that everyone deserves if they have no chance of recovering from their ailment.
