RCN - Neutral towards assisted suicide

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The Royal College of Nursing has taken the same stance as the medics' British Medical Association briefly also previously took, to neither support or oppose a change in the law over assisted suicide. The decison reached after nursing members showed no strong preference for either stance.

The law surrounding this is complicated and the subject highly contentious. Nurses will not want to compromise care and this result is probably a mix of the need to protect vulnerable adults whilst also supporting a dignified end of life experience.

However this could have a significant addition to the debate that a professional group so heavily involved in the care of terminally ill and dying patients would not have a strong and hardened view to oppose it. Indeed it could be reflective of a change in public opinion in general.

Detailed guidance will now need to be drawn up to consider the clinical frameworks and ethics of assisted suicide. In the meantime given that the recent unsuccesful attempt to change the law and the BMA now firmly against the legalisation, it not likely anything will change in the near future, something the RCN will have been all too aware of when the made this announcement I'm sure.