2023-11-14 04:30:14
Killing a patient: the question divides caregivers. While a bill on the end of life promised by Emmanuel Macron is still awaited, The world surveyed around ten doctors, a psychologist, a nurse. Each of them reveals, through their practice, their relationships with patients, the personal ordeals they went through, the reasons why they would – or not – perform a lethal gesture. Some say they have already done it.
These caregivers are positioning themselves at a particular moment: currently on the desk of the Head of State, the copy of the bill that The world was able to consult in a version dating back to the beginning of October providing access to a “assisted dying”the act being “in principle carried out by the person himself”. It also mentioned, if the person is physically incapable of « s’autoadministrer la substance »the intervention of a doctor, a nurse, or even a loved one.
While a large part of the caregivers, gathered around the French Society for Support and Palliative Care (SFAP) in recent months, have argued that “giving death cannot be treatment”, others white coats consider this gesture as a “ultimate care”. Without trying to measure the balance of forces, here are testimonies which allow, at the level of practitioners, to explore the question.
“I was there when she closed her eyes,” remembers neurologist Valérie Mesnage, who put Ingrid R. into a deep sleep until her death in 2018 at Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris. Suffering from Parkinson’s disease which prevented her from eating alone, the patient had reiterated to the doctor ” right in the eyes “ on “ask to end it”.
Since 2016, any patient – under the Claeys-Leonetti law – has the “right” to request a “deep and continuous sedation until death”. Granted if doctors believe that the person is at the very end of life, it is implemented if the pain is considered unbearable. Ingrid R.’s agony lasted three days. At the end of other sedations carried out, Valérie Mesnage remembers « phases agoniques » six or even seven days. “This time of survival, sometimes unbearable for loved ones, hard to bear for the medical team, what meaning does it have? “, asks this Parkinson’s disease specialist who welcomes us in the attic of Cochin hospital in Paris. The sick must be able, she says, “choose another end of life”.
The ordeal of a cousin who died of bone cancer at age 30, in“inhumane” pain, deeply marked her. A form of helplessness of the medical profession or even indifference to its “unappeasable suffering” had revolted the young doctor, of the same age, as she was. His indignation remained intact. Determined to change the law, Valérie Mesnage initiated a column, published in The world on September 8, signed by around a hundred caregivers, including several cited in this article. Undertaking euthanasia would be, she continues, “very humanly complicated”. But to put a patient to sleep until he dies, what else is “psychological euthanasia since the patient is definitively cut off from his relationship with the world? The difference is that we let fate decide our biological death.” In either case, the doctor decides whether “toggle”. “And it’s this moment that’s difficult. »
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