This. It was pathetic. They kept saying "under the cloak of darkness". I think even the elephant expert witness used that terminology too.
the admin (who has a background in pharmacy) that was alerted and didn't act quickly was "fired" with some sort of settlement agreement, and was given "glowing reviews" by mount carmel when he attempted to obtain new employment.
Prolonging suffering not to appease anyone but to protect oneself
So would a countless number of mainstream critical care and palliative care doctors who would ensure your comfort and get you off the machines for a dignified death.
But we prolong end of life all the time. You can lobby politicians and medical boards to change this, but as it currently stands you can’t just do what’s right for the patient. You diagnose brain death but a family member from out of state is flying in the next day. Guess what? You keep the dead patient on the ventilator for their family to say goodbye. That’s 24 hours of ventilating and medicating someone who’s already dead. Same with delaying withdrawal to see if family wants to donate. These are cases of clear cut medically diagnosed death and sometimes it drags for days. You can have cases of severe brain damage or refractory shock or liver failure and you keep the patient alive for weeks doing procedures and having them on machines to “appease” people. This is modern medicine. You don’t have to like it, but you have to play by the rules until you can get the rules changed (and then still play by the rules).
And yet many, if not most, of the nurses and pharmacists that were fired supported him even after they were fired. They signed petitions for him and many were in court to support him.
You and I agree that in that case you should be allowed to die a comfortable death and not be subjected to artificial life-sustaining care.
Did you watch the testimony of the lead detective who investigated it? He came off as knowing very little and admitted to not looking into things very thoroughly. It was painful to watch and definitely causes speculation as to who was actually driving the investigation.
I agree that people should take responsibility for their actions unless coerced. I don't know enough about what happened to conclude that coercion happened here, so I do not assent to my colleague's view. But since I thought it's an interesting take I shared it.
On all the patients I’ve ever pushed multiple doses of morphine and benzos on, none of them could speak, all of them were unconscious, and all of them died in a couple minutes-hours with their families at bedside. On one occasion the family actually sang songs to them before they passed. I don’t think they would have had that moment if the patient would have passed instantly and I believe the patient would have loved to see their family sitting around singing to them. I think medicines are great for transitioning from life to death but for the vast majority of cases multiple doses is probably better than one huge bolus especially in the ED, maybe different in the ICU but I don’t work there.
I beg to differ that an OD on fentanyl would necessarily be comfortable. Morphine maybe, but not fentanyl. Fentanyl is well-known to cause muscular rigidity that can make artificial ventilation quite difficult and certainly tax the strength of respiratory muscles in an unventilated and especially debilitated patient. I've seen dysphoric agitated delirium with fentanyl even at low doses on a patch. While morphine can cause dysphoria in some patients it is much rarer than with fentanyl and the respiratory rigidity produced by fentanyl is not seen with morphine. I can't imagine how horrible it would be for a patient taken off a vent to feel his chest as if it were bound up in a vice. That may be one of the reasons why physicians argued against its use in lethal injection executions (in Nevada) and why in those countries that allow euthanasia it is not a recommended drug for that purpose.
Do you have any proof of that? Is that what the Ohio Medical Board said was the reason for his license suspension? Medical Boards do revoke licenses for actual criminal convictions, but they don't do so because they think a physician committed a crime. Yes, they may suspend a license while someone is charged with a crime, but that is nothing a physician is likely to be able to successfully sue them for. Hospital peer review also doesn't make decisions about the "criminality" of care like that provided by Husel. They discipline (up to and including firing) physicians for departures from the standards of medical care, and there is absolutely no question that Husel practiced well outside the standards of medical care. That will likely come out in his pending medical malpractice trial(s). In these he cannot hide behind his lawyers but will have to testify. And likely all sorts of things the criminal jury was kept from seeing (like his criminal history) will all come out in the open. It doesn't look all that rosy for him I think.
I haven’t given fentanyl in these doses, but I have seen 1-2 cases (one of them was called that due to lung compliance but I have my doubts it was the cause) of the chest wall rigidity that keeps being mentioned in probably 5000 or so patients I’ve given fentanyl to. I generally use other agents for pain, but commonly use it after intubation as a drip, and use it routinely in trauma or other unpredictable pts.
Kevorkian did not perform euthanasia. Kevorkian performed physician assisted suicide, which is what is now legal in several U.S. states. He set up drugs for patients to take themselves. He assisted people in ending their own lives. Euthanasia is the giving of a medication by a physician to intentionally hasten a patient's death and is illegal in all 50 U.S. states. Except for in...or unless....ah... forget it.
The longer the duration of a fentanyl infusion the longer it’s half life becomes. This is well documented. It’s referred to as context sensitive half time.
In his final act, yes, not the first 130 (or however many it was). He also had no medical license at that point, started acting as his own attorney and video taped that final act daring law enforcement to arrest him. He changed his method for that one final time, deciding to go down as a martyr for the cause, as opposed to trying to evade the consequences of his actions. But generally, physician assisted suicide was his method.
After Youk provided his fully informed consent (a sometimes complex legal determination made in this case by editorial consensus) on September 17, 1998, Kevorkian himself administered Thomas Youk a lethal injection.
See the clarification right above your post.
The patients had been on infusions prior to the palliative extubation which that chart shows why it wouldn't be fast off for these patients (as opposed to a hypothetical patient who had not been on fentanyl at all prior to the extubation).
I see, but I’m confused as to your point. He was acquitted of all the others and vowed to continue committing euthanasia aka mercy killings unless he was arrested.
