The Role of the Physician in Caring for Patients Pursuing VSED: Challenging the Conventional Approach

The conventional approach to caring for patients pursuing voluntarily stopping of eating and drinking (VSED) allows physicians to disagree with the patient's decisions to pursue VSED, but it assumes clinicians should accept the patient's choice and provide all aspects of supportive care after the patient has autonomously elected to pursue VSED. We argue this conventional approach problematically ignores the problem of complicity with what some physicians take to be an unethical action. We propose an alternative approach that makes space for clinicians opposed to VSED to advise against this course of action, and to provide palliative medicine while resisting interventions that facilitate VSED.