Annotated Bibliography on Euthanasia and Nursing Ethics

This annotated bibliography examines three peer-reviewed articles related to euthanasia and its implications for nursing practice. The first article reviews the nursing ethics literature, exploring the role of nurses in euthanasia and ethical arguments surrounding it. The second article presents a systematic review of motivations of physicians and nurses for performing voluntary euthanasia, comparing practices in countries where it is legal versus illegal. The third article investigates attitudes toward euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide among healthcare professionals, considering factors like training, patient characteristics, religion, and locus of control. Each entry includes full citation information, a summary of the author's purpose and content, a comment on its usefulness for literature review and the nursing profession. The bibliography highlights the multifaceted perspectives on euthanasia, addressing ethical considerations, motivations of healthcare providers, and the influence of various factors on attitudes towards end-of-life care.

Running Head: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON EUTHANASIA
Annotated Bibliography on Euthanasia
Name of Student:
Name of University:
Author Note:

1Annotated Bibliography on Euthanasia
Topic: Euthanasia is the right of everybody.
Pesut, B., Greig, M., Thorne, S., Storch, J., Burgess, M., Tishelman, C., ... & Janke, R.
(2019). Nursing and euthanasia: A narrative review of the nursing ethics
literature. Nursing ethics, 0969733019845127.
Euthanasia is defined as a medically assisted death which is spreading worldwide.
Canada is the only country to legalize euthanasia first, which allowed nurse practitioners to
provide euthanasia. This article has exploited various factors like the nature involved in the
nursing practice, ethical principles considered, concepts and theories, the moral consistency
as well as the nature of the social good. Evidences of the importance of the role of nurses in
the initial appeal for euthanasia has been reviewed well and supported in the research study.
This article provides a descriptive and vivid review of ethical arguments with respect
to euthanasia and the nursing practice involved in the phenomenon. The article is close
adherence with the right to euthanasia for everybody. It describes the right vividly and has
exploited nine electronic databases to provide the summation of the literature of euthanasia
and ethics related to nursing. This study failed to formally evaluate the robustness of the
literature study formally. The systemic analysis did not differentiate between the articles that
addressed the euthanasia and the ones that addressed physician assisted suicide.
Vézina-Im, L. A., Lavoie, M., Krol, P., & Olivier-D’Avignon, M. (2014). Motivations of
physicians and nurses to practice voluntary euthanasia: a systematic review. BMC
palliative care, 13(1), 20.
The aim of this systemic review article was to identify the motives of the nurses as
well as the physicians for performing the act of voluntary euthanasia and a comparative study
was done based on the detections from the countries where this practice is legalised to those
countries where it is not. Studies have depicted that the health care givers are influenced for

2Annotated Bibliography on Euthanasia
practicing voluntary euthanasia if they are used to practicing the same taking into
consideration that there is no depressive symptoms and has a reduced life expectancy and
their respective medical specialty also plays a role in their motivation.
This systemic review has a very strong source of secondary information which poses
as the strength of the paper. It deals with 27 empirical quantitative studies divided among five
countries where the act of euthanasia has been legalized and the other 22 countries where it is
not legal. This article focussed on the four variables that are frequently associated with the act
of euthanasia involves past behaviour, life expectancy of the patient and medical speciality.
Hains, C. A. M., & Hulbert-Williams, N. J. (2013). Attitudes toward euthanasia and
physician-assisted suicide: a study of the multivariate effects of healthcare training,
patient characteristics, religion and locus of control. Journal of Medical Ethics, 39(11),
713-716.
Public as well as the healthcare professionals have different attitudes towards
euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS). There are a lot of influencing factors that
come in to play which includes age of the patient, pain levels as well as the number of
euthanasia requests.
This objective of the article is to test the relative importance of an immensely huge
range of variables in a sample of non-nursing controls and nursing trainees. This article relied
on primary source of data which exploited 151 undergraduate nursing students who were
asked to complete a self-report questionnaire. There were non-nursing students also
approached to with the questionnaire but there was no significant variance in attitude
observed among the groups. Though this article is relevant to the topic but the limitation is
that there is no light on the controversies to the euthanasia provided. Comparatively less
literature studies are involved in this paper which can be considered another limitation.

3Annotated Bibliography on Euthanasia
Pesut, B., Greig, M., Thorne, S., Storch, J., Burgess, M., Tishelman, C., ... & Janke, R.
(2019). Nursing and euthanasia: A narrative review of the nursing ethics
literature. Nursing ethics, 0969733019845127.
Vézina-Im, L. A., Lavoie, M., Krol, P., & Olivier-D’Avignon, M. (2014). Motivations of
physicians and nurses to practice voluntary euthanasia: a systematic review. BMC
palliative care, 13(1), 20.
Hains, C. A. M., & Hulbert-Williams, N. J. (2013). Attitudes toward euthanasia and
physician-assisted suicide: a study of the multivariate effects of healthcare training,
patient characteristics, religion and locus of control. Journal of Medical
Ethics, 39(11), 713-716.