Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Discussion 1 Response
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Discussion 1 Response
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Physician-assisted suicide and allowing a patient to die are subjects that have raised a number of debates among healthcare professionals and the public in many countries around the world. It is true the way you identify that these are two separate subjects often confused to mean the same situation. While physician-assisted suicide refers to a doctor’s assistance to a patient requesting to die, allowing a patient to die occurs when a treatment to sustain life has been determined to be futile. As Pozgar (2016) describes, allowing a patient to die only applies when a physician determines that the effect of continuing treatment does not have any benefit to sustaining the life of a patient. The two practices have legal and moral implications. Both physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are deliberate actions taken with the aim of ending a patient’s life and relieving a patient from persistent suffering. In most states, physician-assisted suicide is illegal. It is a legal requirement that a physician has to sign the “Do Not Resuscitat...