Palliative Care and Assisted Dying: A Comparative Analysis

The provided document is a research-based assignment that delves into the importance of palliative services and assisted dying for individuals with terminal illnesses. It highlights the effectiveness of palliative care in managing pain and diseases, emphasizing the need for healthcare professionals to develop relevant skills. The document also emphasizes that palliative care should be the primary priority over assisted dying. A literature review and analysis are presented, concluding that terminal illness may have limited cure possibilities but can be effectively managed with palliative care.

Research nursing

INTRODUCTION
Title
“Palliative care and assisted dying ”
Aim
To analyse the role of palliative care over assisted dying on patients suffering from long
term and critical illness.
Objective
 To recommend the palliative care services to patients with critical health condition.
 To analyse the barriers in providing palliative care
 To evaluate the impact of palliative services on health outcomes and other possible
options for the patients at end phase of their life.
 To analyse the legal and ethical aspects of assisted dying.
Research questions
 Why palliative care is recommended?
 What are the barriers which affect the quality and delivery of palliative care services?
 What is the impact of palliative care services and what are the other substitutes people are
seeking for palliative care?
 What are the legal considerations and ethical perspective related to assisted dying?
Rationale
There has been increasing demand of palliative services but still most of the health
professionals fail to deliver these services. As a result there has been continuous debate to allow
assisted dying so that patients can deal with their sufferings (Kavalieratos & et.al., 2016). The
study will analyse the perspective of both of these approaches so that healthcare quality can be
improved and better decisions can be taken for the patients.
Significance
The study is very beneficial for the health professionals and people so that they can
understand the importance of palliative services. It will also help professionals to enhance the
delivery of health services and to provide clarity over assisted dying concept (Beardsley, Brown
& Sandroussi, 2018).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Palliative care and its need
1

According to Kelley & Morrison, (2015) palliative care is very effective and important
care approach to improve the health quality of patients suffering from server life threatening
diseases such as cancer, neurological diseases and advanced lung or kidney diseases and HIV
AIDs. Palliative care services aims to minimise the pain and suffering of patient by providing
physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological assistance. Along with the medications and
treatment palliative care services provide strength and positive motivation to patients so that they
can strongly face the critical phase of their life.
Impact of palliative care on health outcomes
Palliative care services plays very important role in improving the health outcomes of
patients. The long term illness is not only painful for patient but also for their family members.
As per Bakitas & et.al., (2015) palliative care strategies aims to demonstrate death as normal
process so that people can face it without getting stressed or fear. However, it is not essential that
palliative services are provided only during end stages of life. These services are also provided
with the onset of treatment process so that symptoms of diseases can be controlled and clinical
complications can be reduced. Thus, it can be concluded that these services have positive impact
on overall well being of patient and enhances the quality of healthcare services.
Role of nurses in providing palliative care
The nurses and health professionals plays very important role in providing palliative care.
The healthcare professionals must have necessary skills and knowledge so that they can identify
the palliative care needs of patients. Many patients in their last phases assume that either they
will suffer from pain until their last breath or they can avail assisted dying. With the help of
palliative care nurses can develop better understanding and relation with their patients. This
understanding also improves the nursing and care interventions. Sansó & et.al., (2015) stated that
palliative services provided by nurses can give a choice to people that they can make their illness
less painful.
Assisted suicide and perspective of healthcare professionals and service users
Assisted suicide or euthanasia is defined as an action accomplished by an individual with
the help of others to end the life so that they can get rid from extreme pain due to long term
illness which cannot be cured. The approach is not favoured by every one since people believe
that palliative care can be used to help such patients. On the other hand it is also assumed by
family members and patients that there is no use of living painful life which does not have any
2

end of suffering. Thus, the best option is to choose the method of dying so that they can at least
have peaceful death. However, it also argued that since effective palliative services are not
provided to patients assisted suicide is demanded but no health professional has right to assist in
death of a person when they have scope to survive.
Legal aspects of assisted suicide
The assisted suicide is not acceptable by all health professionals and communities as
well. The issue has mixed response and thus in different parts of the world it has different legal
aspects. In Australia assisted dying is illegal while it is completely legal in Germany,
Netherlands and in some US states. In order to get the consent on the matter it is required that
confirmation from patient, family members and service providing health professional is taken. It
assures that there are no ways or methods left to improve the health condition of patient and thus
patient must be allowed to seek assisted dying.
Palliative care versus assisted dying
According to Emanuel, (2017) every individual has the right to live happily and to choose
the method their death so that they can die peacefully. The suffering of patients suffering from
cancer and other chronic diseases cannot be experienced by government authorities or service
providers thus people must choose if they want to end their life. Contrary to this Frey & Hans,
(2016) stated that the idea of “dying on demand” is completely unacceptable. Instead, the
palliative care is the best substitute for providing relief to people. Many health professionals and
communities believes that assisted dying is not the solution. The palliative care can gradually
improve the health condition but there is need to make palliative care services accessible to
people.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research methodology provides the statistical guidelines that how research will be
executed and which methods will be used to conduct the study. The research methods which will
be used for this study are as follows:
Research philosophy: The philosophies provide the knowledge and skills for the completion of
research. This research study will use interpretivism philosophy. This method employs the use of
themes for providing validate analysis of qualitative data.
3

Research design: It describes the blueprint to accomplish the study and is of descriptive,
exploratory and causal type. For this study purpose exploratory design is used. This design
approach helps to explain the all aspects related to the research topic.
Research approach: The research approach provides the path for the research execution. The
various approaches such as inductive, abductive and deductive can be used for the research
studies. In this study inductive approach is used because it is more suitable for the analysis of
qualitative data by using various theories and concepts.
Research type: The research can be based upon qualitative as well as quantitative type. The
qualitative type research does not analyse numerical or statistical data while qualitative data use
theories instead of statistics. In this study qualitative data is used so that relevant conclusions can
be drawn on the basis of observations.
Data collection: Data collection methods helps to gather the evidences and data which provides
research conclusion. Data collection can be of primary and secondary type (Goldberg & et.al.,
2017). In this study primary data is collected by using questionnaire so that real world data is
obtained for the study purpose.
Sampling: To make the study effective a small population is selected for the research purpose. In
this study random sampling is used and randomly 30 health professionals are chosen who have
experience of providing palliative care services.
Data analysis: The data can be analysed and interpreted by using statistical tools or themes.
Since in this study qualitative data is used for analysing the data themes will be developed for the
study purpose.
RESEARCH TIME LINE
The time line for executing the research is as follows:
Activity Week
1
Week
2
Week
3
Week
4
Week
5
Week
1
Week
6
Week
7
Week
8
Introduction to
research topic
Writing project
Research methodology
4

Data protection and
research ethics
Collection of
secondary data
Literature review
Collection of primary
data
Data analysis
Research report
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion it can be concluded that palliative services and assisted dying
both are important consideration for the people with terminal illness. The palliative care can be
very effective in pain and diseases management of patients thus health professionals must
develop skills so that they can provide palliative care. It has been also analysed that assisted
dying must not be consider as the substitute or palliative care instead the health service providers
and service users must use palliative services as their first priority over assisted dying. It can also
be concluded that terminal illness may have least or negligible possibilities to be cured but the
use of palliative care will help patients to effectively manage their symptoms and sufferings.
5

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bakitas, M. A. & et.al., (2015). Early versus delayed initiation of concurrent palliative oncology
care: patient outcomes in the ENABLE III randomized controlled trial. Journal of
Clinical Oncology. 33(13). 1438.
Beardsley, C., Brown, K., & Sandroussi, C. (2018). Euthanasia and surgeons: an overview of the
Victorian Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 and its relevance to surgical practice in
Australia. ANZ journal of surgery. 88(10). 956-958.
Emanuel, E. (2017). Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide: focus on the data. The Medical
Journal of Australia, 206(8), 1-2e1.
Frey, L. M., & Hans, J. D. (2016). Attitudes toward assisted suicide: Does family context
matter?. Archives of suicide research. 20(2). 250-264.
Goldberg, S.B. & et.al., (2017). Is mindfulness research methodology improving over time? A
systematic review. PloS one. 12(10). p.e0187298.
Kavalieratos, D. & et.al., (2016). Association between palliative care and patient and caregiver
outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Jama. 316(20). 2104-2114.
Kelley, A. S., & Morrison, R. S. (2015). Palliative care for the seriously ill. New England
Journal of Medicine. 373(8). 747-755.
Sansó, N. & et.al., (2015). Palliative care professionals' inner life: exploring the relationships
among awareness, self-care, and compassion satisfaction and fatigue, burnout, and
coping with death. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. 50(2). 200-207.
6

7

8

9

10

11