Re:Doctors' Secret Language for Assisted Suicide
by chiph on Monday May 16, 2016 @08:40AM
(#11705872)
If you're on hospice, you're typically at home, with a caregiver coming by once or twice a day to see how you're doing, clean up, etc., and to check on the automatic IV drip machines. These machines come with a remote that lets the patient request additional pain meds, and they're supposed to have limits on how often the button can be pressed in a certain time period. But if you're on hospice, with stage IV pancreatic cancer or other no probability of survival and extremely painful illness, those limits are sometimes not set.
Source: A friend's mom was a hospice nurse who ended up going into hospice herself.
It seems to me that administering potent drugs such as morphine would be controlled by medical staff who have the knowledge around safe doses.