Physician Assisted Suicide Case Study

The concern that comes to mind, when considering ideas I’ve been exposed to in our ethics course, and that causes me some apprehension due its inevitable involvement it in my career as a physician is treating patients requesting euthanasia or physician assisted suicide/death (PAD). While this isn’t a performance-based concern per se nor do I anticipate its occurrence often, I am apprehensive because at the onset of writing this paper I didn’t have any reservations in advocating for or offering PAD as a means to end suffering.
Late last semester I attended a short lecture and discussion on the topic of PAD1. Dr. Unrein and one of his guests spoke on the issue and invited medical students to voice their thoughts and opinions. It was interesting

I began to think about what life might look like as a physician who killed people, morbid as that is. I even thought it might be possible to do only that and see future doctors making a living solely through assessing patients considering death as a solution and offering that service. Obviously I am no expert on the evaluation of a patient in or near that kind of situation, but in the future, I could be. Making a judgment on a patient’s condition and prescribing appropriate therapy is what a physician does day in and day out, how is assessing a patient and deeming PAD as an appropriate therapy any different?
These thoughts, in combination with the notion of autonomy to its fullest extant; being such that patients not only have a right to their life but to their death as well, made a lot of philosophical sense to me. At times it even seems asinine to prevent a patient from doing whatever they wish with their own body, as long as it does not harm others. Yet, in all these thoughts I couldn’t help but feel that my approach was too mechanistic, too simple, too, dare I say, logical for the complexity of the circumstances. Despite my black and white approach, I began to have doubts that greyed my

What force is at work to change the long-defended opposition to PAD? I believe its roots are buried deep in patient autonomy. It’s no surprise that this trend is primarily taking place in the first-world where patient autonomy is most highly valued. However, I also believe that for a majority of patients, the desire for the option to end one’s life is masquerading as the desire to truly end it, which, in my mind, suggests a cry for autonomy more so than death as a means to end suffering. Evidence reveals that despite a surprising number of patients requesting PAD and having that request granted very few of them actually implement it, less than 3.0% in a recent study2. I find these data particularly convincing that an approach to PAD exists that satisfies our patient’s deeper desires and remains true to our mission as physicians, to save lives. I think back to Dr. Unrein’s lecture and I am reminded that I did leave that day with more than just the beginnings of a change of mind and heart, but actually the very landing place in regards to PAD that I have come to adopt as I move into my clinical rotations. Before we left that day, Dr. Unrein revealed that he advocated for legalization of PAD. While he maintained that his personal beliefs and professional modus operandi will always preclude