eli5: Patients in hospice care are often unconscious due to high doses of sedative drugs, and are given no intravenous fluids, which leads to death by dehydration. Why is this done? Is there any difference between this and physician-assisted suicide?
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They’re going to die anyway. They have a terminal disease with a prognosis of death in the near future.
When someone chooses hospice, the goals for their care change. In general with healthcare the goal is to treat a disease to prevent complications and prolong life. When someone chooses hospice care, the goal is to make their end of life as comfortable and easy as possible.
There are uncomfortable symptoms that are common at the end of life- pain, nausea, shortness of breath, anxiety, etc. So we give pain medicine, anxiety medicine, nausea medicine, etc.
Giving IV fluids does not alleviate any of those symptoms. Giving IV fluids will prolong life while not reducing symptoms/providing comfort. In addition, the kidneys start failing as someone is dying, which means they can’t process and pee out fluids they get. Giving IV fluids would mean they get “fluid overloaded,” causing swelling all over their body and fluid to back up into their lungs and make breathing difficult. So we don’t do it.
We are not killing them by withholding IV fluids. We’re just not artificially prolonging their life. So they may be dying of dehydration, but that dehydration is a natural part of dying from their disease. We allow that natural process to happen so that they can have as peaceful and painless death as possible.
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