Table 1

Review of the existing literature on attitudes relevant to euthanasia

	Number of respondents	Response rate	Question asked	% of Yes
*ICU: Intensive Care Units.
†VE: precipitating the advent of death of a competent patient who is suffering uncontrollably and explicitly wishes to terminate his or her life by direct interference by the physician, for example, by the injection of a lethal drug.
‡Four criteria: the patient must suffer from unbearable physical pain; the death of the patient must be unavoidable and imminent; all possible palliative care must have been given and no alternatives to alleviate the patient's suffering must exist; the patient must explicitly request doctors to help him or her hasten their death.
1. Medical Doctors
Chiyo, et al, 1993⁷	21 ICU* doctors and 22 general practitioners	Not reported	Would you approve of VE?†	73% and 57% respectively
Sakamoto, et al, 1996⁴	273 clinicians who were subscribers to a journal	27% (273/1000)	Would you approve of VE when four criteria‡ are met?	10%
Asai, et al, 1998⁹	339 internist members of the Japan Society of Cancer Therapy	68% (339/498)	Would you approve of VE?	21% (there are some situations in which VE is justified)
				4% (ethically acceptable)
Miyashita, et al, 1999⁸	1059 doctors working at hospitals, 466 at clinics, and 52 palliative care specialists	51% (1577/3104)	Would you approve of directly hastening patient's death to relieve his or her pain?	0.4% of doctors at hospital, 1.8% at clinics, and 0% of palliative care physicians
2. Nurses
Chiyo, et al, 1993⁷	45 ICU nurses and 52 general ward nurses	Not reported	Would you approve of VE?	72% and 88% respectively
Miyashita, et al, 1999⁸	2190 nurses working at hospitals, 425 at clinics, 394 palliative care nurses, and 352 home care nurses	56% (3361/6059)	Would you approve of directly hastening patient's death to relieve his or her pain?	1.5% of nurses working at hospitals, 2.6% at clinics, 1.2% of palliative care nurses, 0.4% of home care nurse