Attitude of vilnius university medical and philosophy students towards euthanasia and its legalization in lithuania: analysis and evaluation

Attitude of Vilnius University Medical and Philosophy Students Towards Euthanasia and Its Legalization in Lithuania: Analysis and Evaluation Keywords: Euthanasia, legalizing euthanasia, students’ opinion, end-of-life decisions. Euthanasia becomes a popular topic in Europe in recent years. There is no simple assessment of euthanasia, because this phenomenon affects different aspects. In Lithuania some politicians are making efforts to legalize an active voluntary euthanasia form. Different field professionals and society‘s members discuss different aspects of euthanasia and its legalization. Furthermore, it is important to know young generation‘s view on this matter, because they are the future of every country – we can predict the future changes on the young generation survey results. The aim of this work was to evaluate Vilnius University (VU) medicine and philosophy students‘ attitudes towards euthanasia and its legalization in Lithuania. To achieve this aim, 3 tasks were raised: (1) to determine, what is VU medicine and philosophy students‘ attitude towards variety of medical end-of-life decisions, (2) to determine, whether the attitude towards euthanasia and its legalization in Lithuania differs between VU medicine and philosophy students and (3) to assess the factors, that affect the analyzed students‘ attitude towards euthanasia and its legalization in Lithuania. In total 281 medicine and 106 philosophy studying students completed surveys (quantitative snapshot survey was included). Statistical data processing and analysis were performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 23 program: the frequencies of responses were calculated and students’ opinions were compared. Statistically significant differences between students were examined assessing p value, which is obtained from Pearson χ2 test. Significance level α=0,05. To determine the connection between attitude towards euthanasia and its legalization in Lithuania and between study program and as well as other social factors, odds ratio was calculated (it was calculated with WinPepi 11.62 spreadsheet). Philosophy students more often than students of medicine showed their disapproval for euthanasia use (33% vs 22%). Respondents mostly support terminal patient palliative care (87%). Active voluntary euthanasia also received a relatively high approval (71%) – differences between medicine and philosophy students are not statistically significant. From this we may assume, that students accept more double effect doctrine that the intention of killing the patient. Active voluntary euthanasia legalization in Lithuania supports 74% of respondents – significant difference between the study area is not found. Acceptance for euthanasia legalization is not equal to approval for the euthanasia itself. It was found, that statistically significant correlation between the acceptance of euthanasia and liberal political views, free world look and weak religiosity; those, who welcome death penalty tend to accept euthanasia, and those, who are against the abortions, are also against the euthanasia. It is proposed to conduct the study on students’ motivation to accept euthanasia and its legalization and to evaluate, whether there are motivation differences between the students studying different subjects. It is recommended to interview under what conditions euthanasia should be performed and why. A review of literature shows, that no research has been done on the future doctors‘ and philosophers‘ attitudes towards euthanasia in Lithuania, consequently this research will attempt to fill this gap