Report Details Effects of Physician-Assisted Suicide on Doctors.

A report in the spring edition of Issues in Law & Medicine describes the emotional and psychological impact of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) on the doctors who have helped patients die.

Written by Kenneth R. Stevens, M.D., vice president of Physicians for Compassionate Care, the study is a review of medical journal articles, legal investigations, and press reports that detail the impact of PAS.

"The physician is centrally involved in PAS and euthanasia, and the emotional and psychological effects on the participating physician can be substantial," Stevens writes. "The shift away from the fundamental values of medicine to heal and promote human wholeness can have significant effects on many participating physicians."

Stevens studied documents from around the world. In the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been practiced for years, doctors reported many negative feelings associated with euthanasia. "To kill someone is something far reaching and that is something that nags at your conscience," one physician said on a Dutch television program, according to Stevens. "I wonder what it would be like not to have these cases in my practice. Perhaps I would be a much more cheerful person."

Other doctors reported feeling pressure to practice PAS from patients who wanted to die and from hospitals when they applied for jobs. "I know from physicians who are opposed to performing euthanasia that they are afraid of saying so when applying for jobs and trying to find a post as a physician," Henk Jochemsen of the Lindeboom Institute for Medical Ethics told a British House of Lords Select Committee that was studying the issue. "In certain circumstances, that will make it much more difficult for them to get a job."

Doctors in Oregon, which legalized PAS in 1998, also reported the effects of their involvement in euthanasia. "Participation in assisted suicide required a large investment of time and had a strong emotional ...