Attitudes among NHS doctors to requests for euthanasia

Abstract

Objectives: To explore NHS doctors' attitudes to competent patients' requests for euthanasia and to estimate the proportion of doctors who have taken active steps to hasten a patient's death.

Design: Anonymous postal questionnaire, with no possibility of follow up. The survey was conducted from December 1992 to March 1993.

Subjects: All (221) general practitioners and 203 hospital consultants in one area of England.

Results: 273 doctors responded to a question on whether a patient had ever asked them to hasten death. Of these, 163 had been asked to; 124 of these had been asked to take active steps to hasten death; 38 of 119 (32%) of these had complied with such a request (95% confidence interval 23% to 40%). This proportion represented 12% of all those who returned a completed questionnaire and 9% of all those who had been sent a questionnaire (95% confidence interval 6.3% to 11.7%). A larger proportion of the respondents (142/307 (46%)), however, would consider taking active steps to bring about the death of a patient if it was legal to do so.

Conclusions: Many doctors face difficult decisions about euthanasia. For the benefit of both patients and doctors euthanasia should be discussed more openly.