Values at stake at the end of life: Analyses of personal preferences among Swedish physicians

Background Physician-assisted suicide is a controversial issue and has sometimes raised emotion-laden reactions. Against this backdrop, we have analyzed how Swedish physicians are reasoning about physician-assisted if it were to be legalized. Methods participants We conducted cross-sectional study 819 randomly selected physicians’ responses from general practitioners, geriatricians, internists, oncologists, psychiatrists, surgeons, all palliativists. Apart the main questions their attitude toward suicide, also asked what would happen with respondents’ own trust in healthcare Response options that decrease, not influenced, or increase. Results identified strong statistical association between on one hand those whose increase who pro other against decrease [relative risk: 16.7 (95% confidence interval: 10.2–27.2)]. Among influenced (n = 456), 60% pysician-assisted 16% against, 24% undecided. Of large majority supported autonomy-based arguments, whereas non-maleficence-based arguments. Conclusion Analyzing answers after having divided respondents into brings interesting results such as three groups prioritize arguments for suicide. This way of analyzing data seems promising strategy when identifying value-impregnated factual claims.