Romanian Lay People’s and Health Professionals’ Views about the Acceptability of Physician-Assisted Suicide

Daniela Iulia Teodorescu,Maria Teresa Muñoz Sastre,Paul Clay Sorum

doi:10.11144/javeriana.upsy18-5.rlph

Daniela Iulia Teodorescu, Maria Teresa Muñoz Sastre + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.upsy18-5.rlph

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Journal: Universitas Psychologica	Publication Date: Dec 30, 2019
Citations: 1	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Albany Medical Center Hospital

Abstract

The conditions under which Physician-Assisted-Suicide (PAS) would be considered as acceptable among Romanians were examined. In July 2015-May 2016, 212 lay people and 52 health professionals judged the acceptability of PAS in 36 realistic vignettes composed of all combinations of four factors: the patient’s age, the level of incurability of the illness, the type of suffering, and the patient’s request for PAS. A majority of lay people (51%) and health professionals (85%) were opposed to PAS, quite irrespective of conditions. The most important factors determining acceptability were, for 36% of lay people, request for PAS and, for 18%, advanced age.

Highlights

Legislation has been passed to permit and regulate physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and six US states: California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington (McDougall & Gorman, 2008; Steck, Egger, Maessen, Reisch, & Zwahlen, 2013; State-by-State Guide to Physician-Assisted Suicide, 2015)
We expected that health professionals would, more often than lay people express the opinion that PAS is never acceptable
The lay participants were approached by one of the authors while they were walking along the main sidewalks, and the health professionals were contacted at the public hospitals and private clinics or offices where they worked

Summary

Introduction

Legislation has been passed to permit and regulate physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and six US states: California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington (McDougall & Gorman, 2008; Steck, Egger, Maessen, Reisch, & Zwahlen, 2013; State-by-State Guide to Physician-Assisted Suicide, 2015). Similar legislation has been under discussion in other U.S states (e.g., New Mexico, Richardson, 2015), in Western Europe (e.g., France, Heneghan, 2013), and elsewhere in the world (e.g., India, Khan & Tadros, 2013) It is essential, for policy makers, and health caregivers around the world to appreciate the conditions under which PAS is considered as acceptable or unacceptable to the public. The mean rating in Belgium, a country in which PAS is legal was 6.75 This overall rating was low, we expected, in light of previous studies (Mullet et al, 2016), to find several qualitatively different positions: (a) a plurality view that PAS is never acceptable or not very acceptable, and (b) several minority views similar to the ones already found in other studies (never acceptable, not very acceptable, depends on patient’s request, depends on curability, quite always acceptable). We expected that health professionals would, more often than lay people express the opinion that PAS is never acceptable

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