This research examines whether assisted suicide and euthanasia should be legalized and the implications for nursing care. The position taken herein is that legalization makes sense. However, that position should not be confused with an endorsement of assisted suicide and euthanasia. That is, the fact of legalization of end-of-life options for patients and caregivers does not carry with it a mandate for acting them out.
In recent years, the issue of euthanasia has come up before the legislatures of many states. But debate has been problematic for a variety of reasons. To begin with, there are problems connected with discussing euthanasia from a philosophical standpoint alone. That is because philosophy overlaps into law, public policy, medical practice, and medical administration. Another problem is that there is no single definition of euthanasia on which medical practitioners and policy makers agree. The word euthanasia comes from Greek, first eu, meaning "good," then thanatos, meaning "death." In general, this has resulted in explaining euthanasia as mercy killing. But matters are not so simple today because of overlap of philosophy, morality, law, and the like in end-of-life contexts. Euthanasia is what the American Medical Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial describes as a doctor's administering to a patient some means of death, such as "death-causing drug or other agent" (Glasson, 1994, p. 91). First there is passive euthanasia, which is governed by the "patient's proxy," such as a living will, durable power of attorney, or other advance directive. It authorizes withholding life-support treatments when disadvantages of living outweigh the advantages. AMA has a separate definition for assisted suicide, apparently because of the high profile of such figures as Dr. Jack Kevorkian, which means that a doctor gives a patient either means or knowledge to commit suicide but does not perform the act. Palliative treatment refer...