Euthanasia.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Doug, glad to have you back and posting. I too have looked after dying patients, and while Nurses may strive to preserve the dignity of patients......and many believe they do actually do this.....if you question patients about whether they felt their dignity was preserved.....many of them will tell you they didn't feel this was their perspective. That is because dignity is such a SUBJECTIVE thing......because I feel a certain thing will preserve MY dignity, I mustn't fall into the trap of believing that my patient will want the same things.

And you are right Doug when you say that there is some excellent work going on in palliative care, but that it is patchy(in both quantity and quality), that is because the nursing profession do not share good practices very easily. Just before I left the Nursing profession I was involved in Benchmarking..... this was a system where nurses nationwide looked at professional practices and drew up Best Practice guidelines.....some of the issues that were thrown up opened my eyes......I don't know how far the work has got, but it was powerful stuff.

[Doug]

Thank you Margaret, it’s nice to see everyone still at it. Gary, don’t turn your back on those who seek only to join in this debate and express their own opinions. The Mod’s are employed to adjudicate and they will act in all fairness if as you indicate a personal attack has taken place. Your argument is valid and widely supported in my view. We all see it the rights and wrongs of this discussion and respond to those areas that affects our own feeling and values. I am not personally against you; I just have a different point of view. I think what is clearly demonstrated is as Lettie say’s, the subject matter is very emotive……..

Margaret, Your comments in respect of maintaining dignity and the clients/patients perspective on the subject is very true; unfortunately this all too often is a contentious issue in its own right because of the different perspectives on the nature of care and the views of those that deliver that care. In respect of Benchmarking, this continues to be a work in progress, it continues to be fragmented and uncoordinated in some respects, quite often one body will publish findings only to be found lacking by another and then the whole issue will be thrown into a quandary by the government, usually on the grounds of cost. But much good work is being done both in the health and Social care fields and jointly between the two. When we do start to listen more, then and only then will we really move forward.

[Margaret Pilkington]

I know what you are saying Doug, I was instrumental in the teaching of the concept of benchmarking......well, there were 8 of us for BHRV NHS Trust, but we had regular meetings and the North west co-ordinator took the findings of our work forward to the National forum.

We looked at different aspects of care and each ward and department had representatives.......the Benchmarks were completed and we then fed back to our own co-ordinators......good practices were identified and put into place across the trust. Not all improvements had big costs attached to them......some of the improvements were attitudinal.....we just got people to think in different ways about what they were doing.....and not to always do things in a certain way 'because it had always been done like that'......I had great hopes of the process......and I have wondered how things have progressed since I retired.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Sorry, that was a bit of a thread wander there, my only defence is that it is, I suppose, loosely part of the discussion.

[Acrylic-bob]

There seem to be a number of contradictions of logic in some of the arguments put forward so far.

Doug reckons that it is compassionate to put our pets out of their pain and misery because they cannot do it for themselves, but then goes on to say that doing the same thing for a relative who might not be able to help themselves is morally and ethically wrong.

He also argues that all life is a precious gift, which it is, but what value is that gift to the person who is clinically brain-dead and is only kept alive through the actions of Hospital staff and the products of technology? How valuable is that life when the body upon which it is bestowed is no longer aware of it and can make no further use of it?

We are all arguing from a standpoint that bears little resemblance to actuality. Euthanasia may be a criminal offence in this country, but that does not mean that it is not employed in homes and hospitals throughout the country every day of the week by the very same doctors and nurses who publicly claim that they never do and never would! There are even euphemistic phrases employed by the medical profession to describe it. I cannot remember the exact acronym that is appended to a patients notes, something like "NR", which means in effect "take no action to resuscitate this patient". I am sure that Margaret or Lettie would be able to tell us what it is exactly. But that is a form of Assisted Dying; an infraction of the law, whether by commission or, as in this case, omission is still an infraction. And what of the use of increasing amounts of morphine to suppress respiration? Or the over use of powerful anti-coagulent drugs like Heperin? I have seen both used, from the finest of motives; that of bringing death a little quicker and alleviating suffering.

And if you want to bring God into the argument, the Bible tells us that we are each alotted three score years and ten, which would seem to imply that anyone over the age of seventy three shouldn't be alive anyway! The Commandments, quite rightly tell us that it is wrong to kill, but they say nothing about helping someone to die. They do however make rather a big deal about love, respect and being obedient to the will of our elders.

[Margaret Pilkington]

A-B, the Acronym you were searching for is DNR.....Do not resuscitate. I worked mainly on the Gynae Ward (women's bits) and although I have nursed very many terminally ill women, it was very difficult to get Consultants to append notes with the DNR.....however, there is a maxim, cliche.....whatever you want to call it, and it goes like this.....'Thou Shalt not kill, but need not strive officiously to keep alive'........but in practice, I can't say that I have seen it used.

The ladies that I nursed were kept as comfortable as we could make them..... that is not to say that death was either peaceful, or painless.....in a great many cases it was neither, and I can't tell you how impotent, as a nurse, it makes you feel. In many cases the ladies were well known to us and had been in and out of hospital many times. I don't care what anyone says, you cannot divorce your feelings.....and personally I wouldn't have wanted to because when you have empathy for the patient it doesn't disable you.....it makes you give care with love......and that is all that I could say about the subject......the ladies who died in my care were cared for with love..... and their dying always made me feel sad and a little diminished by their loss.

[Doug]

Contradiction or interpretation?

I would argue that it’s ok for an individual to commit suicide if that’s what they desire rather than undergo the pain, distress or torment of facing a life of uncertainty. I say uncertainty because I am aware of a number of clients who have lived that life and have accepted and adapted to the conditions around them, I am also more than aware of a number of others who have not. What I have tried to say is that I don’t believe that the burden of responsibility shouldn’t be placed on another individual. If two parties agree then it a private matter, but who wins the argument If the sufferer imposes there will on a relative or friend who does not want to assist in the taking of a love ones life, I think that is morally and ethically wrong.

If on the other hand the individual wants to commit suicide that’s a private matter, great hurt will still be suffered by those left behind, but they won’t have the burden of taking part in what is effectively manslaughter at the least and murder at the extreme in the eyes of common law. Evan if it is made legal would an individual suffer guilt and remorse for the rest of there life as a result of participating in the act of assisting someone else to die.

No one individual can argue every individual merit of what is and is not right in an issue of this nature, all one can do is state our opinion and hope that we don’t cause undue distress to other by doing so. I think your wrong in your appraisal of my argument but that is you right and you are not hurting anyone by exercising that right.

The later part of your argument is valid of that I have little doubt, but people should exercise due care before recounting any experiences or knowledge of such practices.

[garinda]

I've decided I will be posting again after all, I will not be censored, they'll have to ban me first.


Interestingly I decided to read through the thread starters posts of the person that complained they were being victimised and that I saw as debate.

The said person has already posted about animal experimentation, but more interestingly the mod they complained to also went to his wedding in 1985, and got the thread closed.

Nothing like free speech is there?

[SPUGGIE J]

Nice to have you back G. Nothing better than a bit of research is there so I take it you will not be asking to be put out of your misery in a hurry. Cannot do that to a member it would be unethical, besides which where would the debate come from if you had "died" in full flow?

[garinda]

Originally Posted by SPUGGIE J

Nice to have you back G. Nothing better than a bit of research is there so I take it you will not be asking to be put out of your misery in a hurry. Cannot do that to a member it would be unethical, besides which where would the debate come from if you had "died" in full flow?

Thanks Spug. It does make you wary of starting, or posting in threads which could be seen as contentious or dealing with morality, especially when people who can't stand debate go bleating off to one of their friends the moderators to get the thread closed.

[SPUGGIE J]

Its more akin to tip toeing on a razor blade at the moment. There will always be contentious issues that are discussed and like the one here a big moral one. If there is no discussion or views expressed the piont of this is defunct. To judge anything with only minimal facts is wrong and the communitys input is essential as with "euthanasia" as has been shown on this thread. People may be for against or undecided yet there are people from the medical proffesion that have posted along with those with first hand experiance of the trauma involved as well as the pain and grief it causes. To me athread like this is needed as was the "other" for we all learn and can learn to tolarate the views of others regardless of how strong our feelings are.

[shillelagh]

After watching my dad die from cancer when I was 18 i totally agreed with euthanasia and wanted something in law that if it happened to me then i had the choice to get someone to help me die.

But something changed my mind.

My mum was ill a few years ago and was took to burnley general and she was really ill. We got a phone call for us all to go over and they said that she was dying and they didnt expect her to last the night. They told us that she had asked not to be resucitated etc it was on her notes we didnt know anything about it she'd never said anything to us about it and it was totally unexpected. That weekend we lived in the hospital (it was the year of the burnley riots) taking it in shifts between us and by sunday she pulled through and she was got better. It happened again last christmas I was told xmas eve that she was dying and the doc said that she werent expecting her to be alive to see new year in. Christmas morning she got up at 8am and was expecting me downstairs to open my xmas pressies.

If euthanasia laws had been in, after seeing my dad die like what he did, i wouldnt have gone through that again and i very much doubt my mum would still be alive now. I probably would have used them.

That is why I changed my mind - twice my mum has got better from being at deaths door and why i think now that its better to leave well alone.