[Magdalen] Euthanasia when the patient does not request it.

[Roger Stokes]

On 02/07/2015 23:42, James Oppenheimer-Crawford wrote:
> He reportedly returned after a could of days off to find that she had been
> euthanized by another physician.  "I needed the bed," was the explanation
> given.
>
> I have read this sort of thing often enough to have red flags go off.  The
> idea of murdering a patient (that would surely be what that action
> constitutes) because you need the bed sounds like an invented folk-tale,
> calculated to feed on the fear of being accidentally killed while in
> hospital for some benign procedure.

I woukd like to think this is a folk-tale but am prepared to accept is a 
real possibility.  This side of the pond we certainly have an issue with 
bed-blockers - patients who no longer need hospital treatment but do 
need a space where they can receive extra care that was not available in 
their previous living arrangements.  Until they are discharged from 
hospital nobody can be admitted to the bed they are occupying.

Where there is an agreement that admitting a patient with condition Y 
brings in X amount of money there can be the temptation for the 
unscpulous physician to act to ensure a patient does not occupy a bed 
when it is no longer economic for them to do so.

Roger