What is Terminal Sedation?
Terminal sedation is a form of palliative care offered to patients who are close to death and experiencing considerable pain. In terminal sedation, also known as palliative sedation, the patient is given a heavy dose of sedatives and pain management drugs so that he or she is no longer conscious and experiencing pain. This practice is controversial in some regions, and it has attracted some very heated debate from a wide variety of perspectives. Ideally, terminal sedation is initiated after a discussion with the patient or after reading a patient’s advance directives. In addition to offering sedation, the care provider may provide intravenous fluids and nutrition to increase patient comfort, and additional lifesaving measures may be taken as well. Terminal sedation is offered in the last hours or days of a patient’s life, and only if the patient is in intractable pain which cannot be managed by other means. Once the patient has been sedated, the medical team and family members make dec
Is it the same as physician-assisted suicide?Answer: Physician-assisted suicide is defined as a physician’s act that is meant to intentionally end the life of a patient. Terminal sedation is practiced when a patient is drugged into unconsciousness and kept that way until death.Although physician-assisted suicide is illegal in most parts of the world, terminal sedation is quietly allowed in most medical institutions. There seems to be an attitude that terminal sedation is acceptable because the practice does not immediately kill the patient, as is done with physician-assisted suicide. Terminal sedation “allows” the patient to die more naturally and gradually. Supporters of terminal sedation also note that death is accomplished with the use of legal pain medications that are simply given in larger doses.In applying this issue with the Christian ethic, there are two considerations. Scripture teaches us that God alone has the authority over life and death (Deuteronomy 32:39). We also know
Not to be confused with control of physical pain, the goal of terminal sedation (TS, also known as “palliative sedation” or “total sedation”) is “to induce a state of decreased or absent awareness (unconsciousness) in order to relieve the burden of intractable suffering.” TS is controversial, and has been called a legal alternative to assisted suicide. Too often TS is used when a patient is not actively dying, and is combined with removal of food and fluids. Withholding food and water can only lead to death. To offer total irreversible sedation to a patient might convey the idea that he or she is a burden, or that his or her life is probably not worth living.
