Can Growing Popular Support for Physician-Assisted Death Motivate Organized Medicine to Improve End-of-Life Care?

Excerpt

Modern medicine has experienced tectonic shifts over the last several decades from a technological, ethical, and sociological perspective, particularly around care at the end of life. The confluence of these transformations has shaped the public discourse around the way we die and has given rise to the debates we see today surrounding physician-assisted death (PAD). Through personal stories and stories in the popular press regarding overly aggressive treatments at the end of life, some Americans are fearful that they too might die what is often portrayed as a dehumanizing death. The increasing momentum towards legalization of PAD is in part a reaction to this public perception embedded in a clinical reality and motivated by a desire to regain personal control. This, it can be assumed, would counteract a perceived helplessness to resist the overwhelming array of choices within a system that defaults to aggressive care at the end of life. …