• J Pain Symptom Manage · Mar 2020

    Medical Aid in Dying, Hastened Death and Suicide: A Qualitative Study of Hospice Professionals' Experiences from Washington State.

    • Sheri Mila Gerson, Nancy J Preston, and Amanda F Bingley.
    • Division of Health Research, International Observatory on End of Life Care, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom; School of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Glasgow, Dumfries, Scotland, United Kingdom. Electronic address: sherimila@gmail.com.
    • J Pain Symptom Manage. 2020 Mar 1; 59 (3): 679-686.e1.

    ContextMany jurisdictions around the world have passed medical aid in dying (MAID) laws allowing competent eligible individuals facing life-limiting illness to self-administer prescribed medication to control timing of death. These laws do not prevent some patients who are receiving hospice services from dying by suicide without assistance.ObjectivesTo explore hospice professionals' experiences of patients who die by suicide or intentionally hasten death with or without legal assistance in an area where there is legalized MAID.MethodsSemistructured in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 21 home hospice professionals (seven nurses, seven social workers, four physicians, and three chaplains). Thematic analysis was carried out to analyze the data.ResultsThree primary themes were identified from the interviews: 1) dealing with and differentiating between hastened death and suicide, 2) MAID access and affordability, and 3) how patients have hastened their own deaths. Analysis of these data indicates that there are some patients receiving hospice services who die by suicide because they are not eligible for, have no knowledge of, or lack access to legalized MAID. Hospice professionals do not consistently identify patients' deaths as suicide when they are self-inflicted and sometimes view these deaths as justified.ConclusionSuicide and hastened deaths continue to be an unexamined cause of death for some home hospice patients who may have requested MAID. Open communication and increased education and training is needed for palliative care professionals regarding legal options, issues of suicide, and suicide assessment.Copyright © 2019 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…