Suicide Woman Uses Do Not Resuscitate
October 1, 2009 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Death
Who is right?
A woman tries to commit suicide. She’s rushed to the hospital but she’s conscious still and hands the doctors a living will that stipulates that she doesn’t want to be treated, just kept comfortable as she dies.
The doctors respect her living will and don’t treat her. They feel that if they do treat her, she could come back after them later and accuse them of assault, since she specifically refused treatment. She dies.
Her family is angry, accuses the doctors of allowing the woman to die (which they did). They say, they had not choice because she told them not to. Who is right?
This did happen in the United Kingdom recently. Doctors in the UK have had directives that they were to obey living wills from people who refused treatment. Failure to comply could mean that they could no longer practice medicine.
Here is the whole story.
A 26-year-old woman was depressed. She’d tried to commit suicide nine times the year before, each time by drinking a poison. Each time, doctors saved her. Finally, the tenth time, she drew up the advanced directives telling the medical personnel not to save her and then drank the poison again.
How did she end up in the hospital? She called the ambulance herself. But, according to the letter she handed her doctor, it was not to be saved, it was so she could die in the hospital and not alone. The next day, she died.
What do you think the doctors should have done? Should they have saved her anyway? She was determined to die if she kept trying. Did she have a right to die? Was calling an ambulance something that would annul her desire to die? Were they right to respect her wishes?
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Image: PhotoXpress.com
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