Source: Diario 16
By: María José Sánchez Soria
Despite what many think, sedation and euthanasia are not the same thing. Sedation is a way to avoid human suffering, in any of its numerous circumstances. Today it is common resort to sedation for acute pain, poly-traumatized patients, serious fractures, persons in terminal situations (and it is in this phase where there is more confusion). This is endorsed by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC), “its objective is to get the maximum physical, psychological and spiritual comfort for the patient. Neither palliative sedation nor agony sedation are covert euthanasia. Sedation intends to alleviate the patient suffering without advancing his death, while euthanasia deliberately causes the advanced death of the patient by applying him drugs at lethal doses.”
The Collegiate Medical Organization (OMC) and the Spanish Society for Palliative Care (SECPAL) say that “it is a sedation in agony when the patient is in his last days or hours of life. It must be clearly stated that when there is an adequate indication for sedation, conscientious objection has no place, and it would not be possible to object or refuse any other correctly indicated treatment.
The difference between palliative sedation and euthanasia is clear and determined by the intention, the procedure, and the outcome. Sedation seeks to decrease the level of consciousness through the administration of the minimum necessary dose of drugs to prevent the patient from perceiving the refractory symptom. In euthanasia, advanced death is deliberately sought through the administration of drugs at lethal doses to put an end to the patient’s suffering.”
The only thing sedation does during the last moments of a person’s life is to make him feel relaxed and without any pain; that the sedated person gets into a peace state and able to make his last transit without pain. Sedation is an act of love towards the person who suffers. One must be prepared to say goodbye to our loved one, be able to think more about that person who is leaving than about oneself; and also get rid of that selfishness natural to the human being of wanting to retain at our side that person who means so much to us.
Unfortunately I know very well what it means to go through this situation: my mother suffered it thanks to the intransigence of a nurse who decided to stop sedating her alleging moral aspects, although my mother had been sedated for a day and a half and a Medical Committee had approved the procedure. For a dignified death!
Source: Diario 16
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