Physician-aid-in (PAD) dying occurs where a patient is provided with lethal doses in order to help them in terminating their own lives. According to CBS ( 2010), this procedure is mostly carried out on patients who are in great pain and who have little chances of survival. This might be raised in several cases which can either be supported or declined. The physician may play a major role in a patient’s life as well as going an extra step beyond human boundaries. Physicians also show respect for autonomy in the fact that they take part in the timing of patient death. Although death may sound scary for individuals, every patient should be given time to choose on how to terminate their life (CBS, 2010) .
The physician shows a sense of compassion which goes with the fact that it’s better to die than to suffer. The PAD taking this choice satisfies the patient in that sense. The patient is comfortable with the physician prescription since they are not left to suffer from terminal pains. The physician aid shows honesty since there is an open dialogue between the patient and the physician (Orentlicher, Pope, & Rich, 2016). This promotes openness between them thus the patients are free to discuss their issues with the physicians freely. Even the physician gets to be empathetic on the patients.
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On the other hand, the choice of the physician does not honor life’s sanctity in the sense that it is unethical both religiously and traditionally. This is a form of suicide and at the same time murder. The physician helps to take life which is immoral. However, having higher pros than cons, I think physician aid in dying is a better proposal since it involves both the physician and the patient to come into a consensus and also the patient is given a chance to choose whether to die than being held in a state of suffering (Orentlicher et al., 2016).
In the future, physicians should always consider the probabilistic conditions of the patients and critical view them before concluding on whether to proceed with physician-aided dying. The patients should be free to talk to the physicians attending to them, hence establishing free relations before any medical procedure is carried out.
References
CBS. ( 2010, Aug 12 ). The cost of dying: End-of-life care [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6xPBmkrn0g&feature=youtu.be
Orentlicher, D., Pope, T. M., & Rich, B. A. (2016). Clinical Criteria for Physician Aid in Dying. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 19 (3), 259-262. doi:10.1089/jpm.2015.0092
