Right to Die & Comfort Care

Right to Die & Comfort Care

Introduction

What characterizes a dignified and good death? This is the question Sidney Wanzer, with the help of Joseph Glenmullen, attempts to address in his book “To Die Well: Your Right to Comfort, Calm, and Choice in the Last Days of Life”. With the help of examples and real life scenarios, some of them drawn from his personal life experiences while others from his long practice as an internal medicine physician, Wanzer, skillfully attempts to suggest to terminally ill patients and their caregivers a more peaceful, calm, dignified ways to embrace death on their own terms, which otherwise would have, until recently, been a painful endeavor. In the book, the author emphasizes on what he believe are the two turning points patients have to go through during their illness. First, when the patient undergoes extensive medical treatment to emphasize on care involving comfort and dignity. Second is the time when the patient is not able to receive comfort care that resulted into rushing towards death.

Despite the fact that Wanzer himself admitted that the occurrence of second turning point is extremely rare in contemporary medical practice, he, unfortunately, devotes a relatively larger portion of the book discussing that point and defending euthanasia in the form of suicide with the assistance from physician. In writer's opinion, this is the major reason why the book, somehow, fails to explore the issues concerning the comfort care and dignified death for the patients facing life threatening diseases in order to allow him or her to die well. But Wanzer rightly highlights the cases where a large number of patients have to face death in miserable and undignified manner. This paper attempts to review the Wanzer's viewpoint in light of the contemporary medical practice. The paper also explores the viewpoint of other scholars addressing the same issue, along with the writer's own perspective regarding the issue.

Discussion

Wanzer starts with identifying the cases modern medical practice when patients dying undignified death and unable to receive comfort care during their illness. He supports his argument by describing the pain and sufferings his own mother had face during her last years. According to Wanzer, his mother was suffering from dementia and living in a nursing home. He goes on to tell us how the practitioners, administering his mother, inserted a pacemaker without securing consent from the patient and her family as the act was against the previously expressed wishes of his mother. The case of Wanzer's mother demonstrates a shocking reality in modern medical practice when a patient with a son who happens to be a physician himself, would receive medical procedures without informing her family and achieving their consent prior to the treatment. What is perhaps more shocking is that this type of occurrence is not unusual in large number of health facilities around the world.

According to Wanzer, the main reason behind this dilemma is the widely believed objective of the modern medical practice to solve puzzle of ...