An assessment of Southern California healthcare CEOs' attitudes towards physician -assisted suicide (PAS)

Purpose of the study. The purpose of this study is to discover and identify Southern California healthcare CEOs' attitudes towards physician-assisted suicide (PAS). The information gathered from this study may be useful as a resource data base or foundation in the development of an evaluative tool or procedure that may be used by healthcare CEOs, governing bodies or other interested healthcare personnel that wish to assess, compare and evaluate CEOs' attitudes towards PAS.;Procedure. A descriptive research design was used. The population and sample were selected from healthcare CEOs from acute care hospitals and skilled nursing facilities of greater than 50 beds in capacity from within Los Angeles County, California. A demographic questionnaire was developed by the researcher and The Opinions About Physician-Assisted Suicide Questionnaire (OAPASQ) was modified by the researcher and designed to measure attitudes towards physician-assisted suicide (PAS) for use with this study. Data were analyzed and the results from the respondents were presented by item using frequency tables, Pareto charts and histograms.;Findings. The study identified and presented a variety of attitudes of Southern California healthcare CEOs towards PAS. The major findings of the study revealed that healthcare CEOs exhibit a favorable attitude towards PAS. Healthcare CEOs believe that physicians are morally justified in helping patients end their life, and that an individual, no matter how ill, has the right and freedom of choice to end his or her life. Healthcare CEOs believe that PAS is acceptable for themselves, other adults and the elderly when a person is seriously ill with no reasonable possibility of a cure and they favor (59%) laws to make PAS legal in the United States and believe PAS should be decided on moral issues and not on medical grounds. The demographic data suggest that single CEOs do not favor PAS compared to their married and divorced counterparts. Also, single CEOs (83%), male CEOs (50%) CEOs with Bachelors (67%) and Masters degrees (39%) believe it is not appropriate for a physician to actually administer a lethal dose of a substance to a patient who requested it, while married CEOs (43%), divorced CEOs (67%), female CEOs (50%) and CEOs with Doctorate degrees (71%) approve of this practice.