Custom essay writing service

Buy an essay on Oregon State assisted suicide law. Should it be nation wide?

Assisted suicide appears as the doctors’ and nurses’ ethical dilemma when deciding whether to help to the terminally ill patients or not, thus, on the one hand, acting as an indirect murder or, on the other hand, a person carrying out the will of the patient, following the law by doing their duty and easing the patient’s sufferings. The aim of this paper is to explore an ethical issue of the assisted suicide law in Oregon, taking into consideration ethical side of the problem, analyzing objective pros and cons of the issue.
Assisted suicide is the process by which an individual, who may otherwise be incapable, is provided with the means (drugs or equipment) to commit suicide (Assisted Suicide, 2009). Sometimes instead of this expression the term aid in dying or death with dignity is used. This expressions are used to distinguish from suicide as it is illegal (both assisted or not), and the expression death with dignity presupposes legal actions. The problem of legality of assisted suicide is controversial as well as the question of ethics from the view of the doctors and nurses providing the patient with drugs to end their lives. Speaking about the doctors’ and nurses’ responsibility and morality of the problem, there are some strong pros and cons, some moral dilemma whether to prescribe and give drugs or not, taking into consideration that assisted suicide is legal in some countries and in some states of the USA.

buy an essay

The only reason for the nurse and the doctor to agree on such a help in self-deliverance is stated by the law personal will of the patient. The case of deliberate assistance without patient request to the doctor is considered as the offence of the law in those countries and states with legality of the death with dignity. According to the criminal law, there are some conditions in relation to which a person (even in case of requesting for assistance in suicide) is unable to do suicide legally. These are when the patient is under 14 years old, the patient is in the condition of emergency, or the patient has the illnesses listed in a special code. In these cases the patient may ask for assistance but the help can be considered as murder. Assisted suicide in the terms of ethics resembles euthanasia, which is also a problem of dilemma to the doctors as a prescribers and nurses who carries out the aid in dying. But euthanasia differs from assisted suicide as, in the former, the doctor is the one who makes a decision of prescribing dying drugs to the person suffering from terminal illness or confirmed pain. In case of assisted suicide the decision of dying is made by the patient personally. Here the doctor prescribes drugs and nurses give them to the patient knowing that he will die. This is the core of moral dilemma as a nurse understands that she is the one who carries out assistance in suicide though based on the decision of the patient.