Surgeries have been in existence since the creation of butcheries and inventions of Frankenstein-style monsters.
Nowadays, they are so advanced and convincingly reliable that they employ newly upgraded modern day technology, such as laser beams in cosmetics to solve identity problems, including fear of ageing and related facial and body makeovers.
Nonetheless, surgeons who perform such life transforming practices, including wholly qualified Doctors and nurses, become highly respected idolised public figures and personalities to aspiring enthusiasts, such as secondary school leavers and the like.
Nursing is a health profession where you sometimes literally have to choose between life and death and it is not for the faint hearted. The types of situations and instances they come across during their career lifetimes and decision-makings could be at times very hard and haunting living nightmares.
Having spoken to Tebogo, a senior nurse with several years of experience at Nyangabgwe and Princess Marina Hospitals, working more especially with terminally ill patients, she remained very unconvinced that causing pre-meditated deaths of patients was a wise option in pursuit of reliving pain and suffering. She sounded like a person who was totally against the practice but did eventually admit that it is an unavoidable practice sometimes within the medical and surgical practices.
In the same vein, I have also spoken to Masego, a retired nurse who did not know whether or not euthanasia is against the laws of Botswana. She rather seemed to have endorsed euthanasia as a way of relieving pain and stress from individuals who are suffering from extreme medical and severe surgical conditions.
In view of the above, it is in almost everyone’s personal belief and knowledge that actual euthanasia does evidently indeed go against the epicenter and main focus of general nursing standards and professional ethical practices, which are to eagerly provide dignified comfort and confident medical support to those of us who are suffering from long term illnesses, such as cancer.
Whatever area of nursing one finds themselves in, from theatre, intensive care units to emergency rooms, as health professionals, they are inevitably bound to come across certain decision-making situations where, for instance, the patients who they attend to are in very severe conditions and, as such, thoughts of euthanasia may suddenly cross their minds seeming like a very bright idea, more especially during surgery.
Personally, I do somehow believe that this topic will somehow provide further research and discussion in to this life threatening and very emotional subject but at a higher level.
The most fundamental question is whether it is in our common interests as ordinary, God-fearing civilians, to wipe out and abolish euthanasia completely from medical practices, in the name of humanity.
