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?

Question

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?

In: Other

Answer 1

I was a hospice nurse. Hospice philosophy is about promoting quality of life while they’re alive with an end stage debilitating illness, and helping ease the discomfort of their passing. Allowing nature to run its course. The sedative drugs namely morphine and lorazepam are not always used to induce sedation. Often times the dosing is low to manage symptoms of a disease. Morphine for pain in a cancer patient for example or shortness of breath in a COPD patient.

Once the dying process starts, in many cases the body shuts down non essential functions. Turns out, that usually includes losing consciousness before morphine and lorazepam are being routinely given around the clock. There is an emphasis on usually there because I’ve seen people who don’t go through that part of the process in which case, the morphine and lorazepam are used for the sedative effects in high enough doses to ease their transition. The medications are used to alleviate the discomfort of a disease that was already transitioning them to the end of their life.