Physician Liability for Assisted Suicide
Physician assisted suicide is the term used for actions taken by a medical doctor to hasten a terminally ill patient's death. The U.S. Supreme Court has determined that states are able to decide for themselves whether to permit physician assisted suicide. Only one state in the U.S., Oregon, has a statute making physician assisted suicide legal. In the remaining states, physicians can be held both civilly and criminally liable for assisting a patient's suicide. However, many states allow physicians to withdraw life support from terminally ill patients. In addition, some states allow physicians to prescribe pain medications for terminally ill patients even if the medications may have the result of hastening death.
Whether a physician can be held liable for malpractice in the assisted suicide context is still under debate. For example, a court may find a physician liable for failing to alleviate the pain endured by a terminally ill patient who had expressed a desire to end his or her life. In some cases, physicians have been held liable in malpractice for failing to prescribe enough pain medication for terminally ill patients.
The Oregon Death with Dignity Act provides strict guidelines for physicians to follow in undertaking to assist a suicide. The Act calls for a series of second opinions and patient evaluations to ensure that the treating physician understands the patient's wishes accurately. The Act also prohibits physicians from administering the lethal dose of medication themselves. Instead, patients are given the medication and can decide for themselves if and when to take it.
While Oregon's Act seems to shield physicians from malpractice liability, the federal Controlled Substances Act may be a new source of liability for physicians. The Controlled Substances Act prohibits physicians from prescribing certain potentially life-hastening drugs if they are not prescribed for a legitimate medical purpose. Whether assisting a patient's death is a legitimate medical purpose is unclear. Likewise, whether a physician could be held liable in malpractice for failing to comply with the Controlled Substances Act is also unclear. What is clear is that physicians must be very cautious in dealing with patient's wishes to hasten the death process. Copyright 2009 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
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