In the article “How California Prepared for Implementation of Physician-Assisted Death: A Primer.” Laura A. Petrillo and colleagues meet to discuss the ethical issues they may face as health care providers in the state of California. California was about to become the fifth state in the US to legalize PAD (physician assisted suicide).
The law would go into effect June 2016. The law said that as a physician, they had the option to opt out of helping a patient end one’s life. The convention held many attendees from doctors, state officials and even patient rights advocates.
This conference helped them become more prepared as PAD went into effect in California. I plan to use this article in my research because it focuses on the ethical issues that physicians face with assisted suicide, it also takes into effect the laws that surround assisted suicide in one of the first states where it became legalized.
127 our experts are availableright now
Evaluation
In the article “How California Prepared for Implementation of Physician-Assisted Death: A Primer.” Laura A Petrillo and fellow colleagues successfully determine that although California will be implementing PAD as legal, they as health care providers face many ethical issues that surround assisted suicide.
Now, although I feel they did successfully find there would be issues when PAD became legalized, I did not find many statistics from the meeting. There was a link included in the article for a more detailed information on the conference discussions. However, the link seemed to be expired, which is unfortunate.
Being able to see the statistical facts to back up the discussions would have been beneficial. Issues discussed that are relevant in pertaining to my research included participants who were concerned about how PAD could be looked at as devaluing a sick patients’ life and if the healthcare facility permits PAD will they as a physician prescribe it.
Despite that I couldn’t access the link that included the videos and statistics, the tone of the article insinuated that the opinions of all seemed in agreement on the ethical issues and the effect it could potentially have on the providers. Providers, according to the article could suffer from “moral distress’ this is an issue one may not think about until mentioned.
Another issue discussed was how providers approach cultural sensitivity and talking about end-of-life care to patients and family members alike. These last two issues seemed to really resonate in my mind, although terminally ill and diagnosed with less than 6 months to live, these patients may not realize the stresses the physician faces as well.
