Strange Deathbedfellows: Oregon hospices accommodate assisted suicide

The Hastings Center - Strange Deathbedfellows: Hospices strive to respect self-determination and to avoid abandoning the patient, but will not participate in directly hastening his or her death. Their policies govern how employees discuss physician-assisted death with clients or facilitate access to information about choices, as well as whether hospice providers may attend the death. Hospices’ moral accommodation of this practice is matched by the patients’ psychological accommodation to hospice itself. Since 1998, I have observed that hospice providers have learned not to overwhelm patients interested in physician-assisted death with care, but instead to work on respectful engagement that underscores patients’ preferences.