Medical Ethics of Active Euthanasia Abstract This paper explains what active euthanasia is and how it ethically has an effect on the practice of medicine. As time passes there are increasing numbers of terminally ill cases, such as cancer or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. These patients endure physical symptoms other than pain often contributes to suffering near the end of lift. Most physicians and their patients strive to for cures. However, there are some patients who give up and opt to end their life by way of active euthanasia.
CASE STUDY ONE “DAX” Presenting Ethical Dilemma: In 1973, Donald Cowart (“Dax”), age 25, was severely burned in a propane gas explosion. Rushed to the burn treatment unit of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, he was found to have severe burns over 65 percent of his body; his face and hands suffered third degree burns, and his eyes were severely damaged. Full burn therapy was instituted. After an initial period during which his survival was in doubt, he stabilized and underwent amputation of several fingers and removal of his right eye. During much of his 232-day hospitalization at Parkland, his few weeks at Texas Institute of Rehabilitation and Research at Houston, and his subsequent 6-month stay at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, he insisted that treatment be discontinued and that he be allowed to die.
Some patients were also made to shower with their clothes on. The program un-covered serious abuse within the Hospital and there was a public outcry. Several people wrote to the Prime Minster who was reportedly “appalled” by the findings. The national regulator Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) involvement, Ms Margaret Flynn was asked to investigate what was happening at the Hospital and undertake a Serious Case Review. Whilst investigating she spoke to patients, workers, NHS staff and family members and learnt that there was a high level of physical intervention by the staff and some of the patents very badly hurt with some seen to be self-harming.
They revolutionised psychiatry by allowing the most disturbed schizophrenic patients live outside a psychiatric hospital, or reduce their average length of stay. However, many critics have called these drugs pharmacological straitjackets. Some drugs are more effective in treating acute positive symptoms such s hallucination, thought disorder and delusions; they seem to work by blocking the D2 receptor of dopamine. There are two main two main drug categories; neuroleptic drugs which are the more traditional used drugs and the newer version atypical drugs. Common neuroleptic drugs such as Thorzine aim to block the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine within 48 hours, which have proven to be effective.
This treatment is administrated to a patient by putting a patient into an unconscious state then passing a current of 0.6 amps through the brain. It works instantly, restoring certain neurotransmitters such as nor epinephrine and serotonin. A further biological treatment is psychosurgery; this is broke sown into two surgical procedures: prefrontal lobotomy and sterotactic psychosurgery. A prefrontal lobotomy is often seen as a last resort because the method is very severe and it has a 6% fatality record. A prefrontal lobotomy is administrated by using a probe that enters the brain through the nose or the eye and it then picks and nerves to deconstruct them.
Perhaps Rosenhan was being too hard on psychiatric hospitals, especially when it is important for them to play safe in their diagnosis of abnormality because there is always an outcry when a patient is let out of psychiatric care and gets into trouble. If you were to go to the doctors complaining of stomach aches how would you expect to be treated? Doctors and psychiatrists are more likely to make a type two error (that is, more likely to call a healthy person sick) than a type one error (that is, diagnosing a sick person as healthy) When Rosenhan did his study the psychiatric classification in use was DSM-II. However, since then a new classification has been introduced which was to address itself largely to the whole problem of unreliability - especially unclear criteria. It is argued that
My client is a 55- year old male; I will call him Mr. A., to protect his confidentiality. He has been admitted to hospital due to respiratory failure and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) related symptoms, as well as a stage 3 ulcer on his sacrum. He is also an illicit drug user and has Hepatitis C. He is homeless, currently staying in shelter. Mr. A is cognitive, alert, lacks knowledge of his condition. Verbally abusive and hostile.
The Ethics of Old Times While reading the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot there were many themes and topics I came across such as those of race and discrimination. One that stood out to me the most was the controversy about ethics and making amends between the medical community and the Lacks family. Many questions arouse about the ethics used by the doctors towards Henrietta and the Family, about the family forgiving the doctors, and about the doctors taking responsibility for their lack of ethical respect towards the family. Some may say that Henrietta’s treatment in the hospital was not the best it could had been, although she got an extreme amount of attention from the doctors. Although Henrietta was a black woman, when she walked into John Hopkins she was given medical attention which was rare for hospitals in her vicinity around this time.
However, because thousands of new drugs have been developed recently, because the health care environment is increasingly complex, and because the patients are older and often sicker, there is increasing risk for medication errors in hospitals. They occur most frequently at the prescribing and administration stages. Medication errors occur in all health care systems; and often result in serious patient harm or deaths are the focus because this is an issue for most hospitals. Serious errors harm patients and expose health professionals to civil liability and sometimes-criminal prosecution (NHS Jan 2004, p.9). The statistics of medication error consistently increases in health care sector.
“Hospital-acquired infection” (HAI) is a serious and prevalent issue in today’s healthcare field. The Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital finds this issue to be grave and is doing all that they can to eradicate HAI for good. Hospital-acquired infections are infections that come about during the course of the hospitalization and treatment, but were not present when the patient was admitted to the hospital. According to the CDC, hospital-acquired infections show up “48 to 72 hours after admission or 10 days after discharge” (Collins, n.d.). The reason for this window of time for the infection to develop is because hospitals try to have the duration of hospital stays decreased.