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posted by janrinok on Saturday September 28 2019, @06:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the MAD dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Since Canada legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016, as of Oct. 31, 2018, more than 6,700 Canadians have chosen medications to end their life.

Canadians who meet eligibility requirements can opt to self-administer or have a clinician administer these medications; the vast majority of people choosing MAiD have had their medications delivered by physicians or nurse practitioners. Canada is the first country to permit nurse practitioners to assess for medically assisted dying eligibility and to provide it.

The precise meaning and implications of MAiD—in particular, who can request medical assistance in dying in Canada—is still evolving through court rulings. Québec's Supreme Court recently struck down the reasonably foreseeable death requirement under the Criminal Code and the end-of-life requirement under Québec's Act Respecting End-of-Life Care.

Without the requirement of a reasonably foreseeable death, it is likely that other legal challenges will occur to extend assisted dying to other groups such as those whose sole underlying condition is severe mental illness.

Our research has explored how the nursing profession is regulating the new area of responsibility towards medically assisted dying and how nursing ethics might guide policy and practical implications of nurses' experiences.

Current legislation guards the right of health-care providers to conscientiously object to participation in MAiD. Nurses who do conscientiously object have a professional obligation to inform their employers of that objection, to report requests for MAiD, and to not abandon their clients. They also must ensure that their choices are based on "informed, reflective choice and are not based on prejudice, fear or convenience."

The nurses who surround the process of medically assisted dying are an important source of insight into the complex and nuanced conversations our society needs to have about what it is like to choose, or be involved with, this new option at the end of life, and to be involved in supporting patients and their families toward death with compassion.

Our most recent research involved interviews with 59 nurse practitioners or registered nurses across Canada who accompanied patients and families along the journey of medically assisted dying or who had chosen to conscientiously object. Nurses worked across the spectrum of care in acute, residential and home-care settings.

[...] With the changing landscape of medically assisted dying in Canada, the need for reflective conversations becomes ever more urgent. We need to better understand how medically assisted dying changes the nature of death to which we have become accustomed and how those changes impact all those involved.


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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday September 29 2019, @05:07PM (3 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Sunday September 29 2019, @05:07PM (#900405) Journal

    Depressed people have the right to off themselves as much as people under LSD have the right to jump off the window in panic. It is hard to make an informed decision in some cases. Depressed teen threw herself under a train for a fucking bad grade here, some years ago.

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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 29 2019, @06:09PM (2 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday September 29 2019, @06:09PM (#900444) Journal
    The law already allows depressed people to opt for euthanasia in some jurisdictions. Depression doesn't mean you are legally incompetent. Quite the contrary, it's often a normal reaction to a shitty situation with no apparent solution.

    All antidepressants do is dull the mind - but the shitty situation keeps intruding, so higher doses and a variety of drugs are used, to no better long term effect than a placebo. Why put up with a situation that can't be fixed?

    After all, your body, your choice. If you judge life no longer to be worth living, and nobody can offer a reasonable expectation of improvement in the future, death is the logical choice, and hanging on is irrational.

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    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Monday September 30 2019, @02:28PM (1 child)

      by Bot (3902) on Monday September 30 2019, @02:28PM (#900799) Journal

      Depression is not lacking the will to live, it is falling into a negative feedback loop which results in the lack of will to live. Sure you are not unable to think clearly. Except for decisions involving the will to live which is the symptom of your pathology.

      That in the current situation depression is a valid state of mind is true, but irrelevant. We are not discussing causes but effects.

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      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 30 2019, @08:16PM

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Monday September 30 2019, @08:16PM (#900975) Journal
        Doesn't change the fact that people with major depression are still legally competent to make the decision to terminate their lives. Let's extend the situation to the hypothetical of living to 200. Can you see that someone who has no mental illness might decide that they are just plain bored with life? That same situation can describe someone in long term care, or someone with a dead end job, or no job and no prospects.

        There are people who have zero initiative, are quite happy doing nothing with their lives, dropped out of high school the second day and have no ambition whatsoever. They would be quite happy to live every day the same as the previous one. They don't want a job, or to interact with anyone who has any ambition or desire to be anything but another parasite.

        There are men and women like that - self-entitled lazy shits who think the world owes them a living, and that anyone who works is stupid.

        But for anyone who has ever had any ambition, a decent job, a career, developed skills that put a roof over their head and food on the table, the prospect of never working again can be hard to deal with. Retirement is scary and shitty. The prospect of spending 30-50 years retired without something constructive to do that meets their needs both to feel useful and to interact with others is something they have a hard time coping with.

        why do you think that 2/3 of all firearm deaths in the US are males suiciding? And that the peak is the decade before retirement, when many men who have lost their jobs find they are obsolete. Too old. Can be replaced by someone younger and cheaper and more easily overworked. Volunteer work is less socially acceptable for them than for women as a replacement for "a real job", even though the social network of volunteers, the emotional support, the feeling of doing something useful, is needed at least as much by men, who have many social barriers to expressing how they feel about things on anything but the most superficial level.

        It's going to get worse, especially for men, as traditional jobs disappear. A universal basic income isn't going to help with feelings of a lack of self worth. If someone feels that checking out permanently is more desireable than facing a lifetime being prisoner to a system that doesn't let them lead a fulfilling life, it's hard to argue with their logic. Neither drugs that don't really make the problem go away long-term, while having some really deleterious side effects that make it even harder to cope, nor telling them "things will get better" without any rational basis in fact, are going to work.

        We're going to be needing a lot more people with soft skills to deal with the social disruptionss that are coming, but there aren't nearly as any men available with the necessary skill set to do peer counselling because it's been seen as a "woman's thing."

        Loss of male employed privilege is hard to accept, even harder to deal with. And the social repercussions of loss of such privilege aren't easy either, as those who treated you as an equal now see you as less. Ask any transwoman.

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