Voluntary euthanasia and the nurse: an Australian survey

https://doi.org/10.1016/0020-7489(93)90103-2Get rights and content

Abstract

This article presents the results of a survey of the attitudes and practices of nurses in Victoria with regard to requests for active or passive help in dying from patients who were suffering from a terminal or incurable disease. Questionnaires were sent to 1942 nurses who had been selected at random, 943 nurses (49%) of whom returned completed questionnaires. The survey indicates that a clear majority of those who responded to the questionnaire support active voluntary euthanasia. Many nurses have collaborated with doctors in the provision of active voluntary euthanasia and a few have acted without consulting a doctor. Seventy-eight per cent of nurses thought the law should be changed to allow doctors to take active steps to bring about a patient's death under some circumstances; and 65% of nurses indicated that they would be willing to collaborate with doctors in the provision of active voluntary euthanasia if it were legal.

References (13)

  • J. Glover

    Causing Death and Saving Life

    (1977)
  • J. Harris

    The Value of Life

    (1985)
  • H. Kuhse

    The Sanctity-of-Life Doctrine in Medicine—A Critique

    (1987)
  • H. Kuhse

    Euthanasia

  • H. Kuhse et al.

    Doctors' practices and attitudes regarding voluntary euthanasia

    Med. J. Australia

    (1988)
  • H. Kuhse et al.

    Euthanasia: a survey of nurses' attitudes and practices

    Australian Nurses

    (1992)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (60)

  • Profiles of intended responses to requests for assisted dying: A cross-sectional study

    2021, International Journal of Nursing Studies
    Citation Excerpt :

    These complexities require the relational skills to “hear the clues” in the request to discern what the person truly wants and the ability to finesse the cognitive and affective shift from curative to palliative care (Wright et al., 2017), particularly if the scope of palliative care controversially includes the practice of assisted dying (Bernheim and Raus, 2017; Sheahan, 2016). Coping with the quotidian pressures of clinical requirements that restrict the time to manage these complexities is another (Kuhse and Singer, 1993; Stevens and Hassan, 1994) well-known complicating factor in this (Dierckx de Casterlé et al., 2010). The mix of pressures and influences suggests that responding to a request about assistance to die is not a discrete act, and intentions to respond may not be not discrete either.

  • Grave new world: The conspiracy of silence surrounding non-voluntary euthanasia

    2020, Applied Nursing Research
    Citation Excerpt :

    In about half of the cases, the physician did not discuss this option with the patient beforehand (Pollard, 2001). According to another estimate, about 20% of the physicians who carried out death hastening did it without an explicit request from the patient (Kuhse & Singer, 1993; Magnusson, 2002). Another study conducted in 17 European countries estimated that limitation of life-sustaining therapy occurred in about 73% of dying patients (Sprung et al., 2008).

  • Moral judgment competence of nursing students in the Czech Republic

    2013, Nurse Education Today
    Citation Excerpt :

    More frequently, those were nurse–midwives with no religious affiliation practicing in countries with more liberal euthanasia legislation. Similar conclusions were made by Kuhse and Singer (1993) in Australia, with 78% of nurses thinking that the law should be changed to support euthanasia and as many as 65% of nurses indicating their will to collaborate with doctors in the provision of active voluntary euthanasia if it were legal. On the other hand, only 15% of Polish nurses agreed with euthanasia (Brzostek et al., 2008).

  • The role of nurses in physician-assisted deaths in Belgium

    2010, CMAJ. Canadian Medical Association Journal
View all citing articles on Scopus

Some results included in this article have been reported previously (Kuhse and Singer, 1992).

View full text