A boa morte: ética no fim da vida

• Autor(a) principal: Gonçalves, José António Saraiva Ferraz
• Data de Publicação: 2006
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10216/22105
• topic: Bioética; Bioethics; Porto

Death occurs inexorably and is common to all living beings. Human beings, who are thought to have a particular consciousness about it, usually do not desire it. However, suffering due to some physical and psychological diseases makes some people desire and seek death. Suicide is one of the ways that some people find to terminate their suffering. When very frail to make it by their own means, sometimes, they try that health professionals, in general doctors, help them to die. Nowadays, there is a consensus that people can, when owning their mental capacities, refuse any treatments even when they could save their life. Even when cognitively incompetent, patients can express their will if they had left instructions about it. However, when the patient will is unknown, there are other decisional problems, but doctors should strive always for what they see as the patient s best interest. A positive response to suffering is palliative care, whose development is pressing but is being too slow. What most Portuguese doctors think about this topic is not known. Therefore, it was done a postal survey to Portuguese oncologists, belonging to the Portuguese Society of Oncology and others. It was observed that most oncologists are against the practice of euthanasia and of assisted suicide, but more than 30% are for their legalization. Only one doctor admitted having practiced euthanasia in one case, but no one assisted any patient in suicide. The most important factor associated with being for or against the practices of assisted death was to be catholic practising or not, with these being for those practices in a bigger percentage. Most oncologists are for the withdrawal of life support measures at the patient s request, although only 41% would accept the withdrawal of feeding and hydration. More than 95% of the doctors would give a drug in order to relieve the suffering of a patient, even if that could shorten his or her life. About 80% think that palliative care could avoid at least many of the requests to assisted death. The results obtained should be cautiously considered, because only 33% of the surveyed doctors replied. The idea that palliative care could be the most appropriated answer to the problems of patients at the final part of their lives reflects a large consensus and is one of the most important conclusions of this study.