Why didn't we notice euthanasia in
"The English Patient ?"

Courtesy of Miramax Films/Phil Bray

January 20, 1997

It's a startling scene, near the end of the movie “The English Patient.”  The army nurse, Hana, has been giving one-on-one care to a burn patient for months, nursing him through all the familiar and difficult stages of recovery.  She's been with him through dramatic pain, lonely hours flat in bed, and poignant flashbacks that tell the movie's tale.  Hana has devoted herself to the role, with just enough time off to fall in love with an explosives expert working for the Allies.  The  patient is healing, although still in enough pain to require regular injections of morphine.  His prognosis is not clear, but he's eating and not in bad shape for what he's been through.

And then one afternoon, when it's time for him to get another dose of pain medication, he flicks a few extra vials sitting on the night table toward Hana.  She looks at him and says nothing.  Crying, she draws the overdose and gives it.  He dies, freeing her from her nursing duties and allowing her to leave just at the time her new lover has been transferred.

I've read reviews of the movie and talked to people who've seen it, and only my husband has reacted the way I have.  Some have told me I'm probably more sensitive to it because I'm a nurse.  One friend told me she just assumed it was the right thing to do, because the patient had worked through his sadness after a long series of flashbacks, rethinking his painful story and the details of his lost love.  Another friend told me he just assumed the patient's pain must have been so bad that Hana did the right thing.

I've seen no mention of this scene in the media, and that surprises me.  After all, the Supreme Court is now grappling with the issue of assisted suicide and the constitutional questions it poses.  Yet in this movie, a nurse deliberately gives a lethal dose to her patient and we scarcely notice.  “But didn't you think the cinematography was great?” asked one friend.

Movies are art, and we can't expect them to completely explain what is happening in society today.  But we can examine how we react to them to better understand our culture and ourselves.  And what I've seen in how my friends and the movie reviewers have reacted surprises me.  There's been so little said about this stealth act of euthanasia.

I know I shouldn't be too shocked at the lack of reaction to the gross overdose.  Last year I sat in a large hall at a Las Vegas convention of urological nurses and watched as virtually everyone gave the speaker a standing ovation when she suggested we might soon have termination centers available to all.  I stayed seated.

I also know the polls suggest Americans are leaning toward euthanasia and assisted suicide.  A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll of 1,022 adults this month showed 58 percent said physicians ought to be allowed to help a terminally ill patient die if the patient is in severe pain and asks for assistance.  Forty percent said they would consider suicide themselves.  But if you talk to pain control experts, they say providing relief from pain is within our reach if providers would just learn what it takes.

The quiet scene from the movie still haunts me.  Perhaps if the timing weren't so perfect for Hana's personal life, or if there had been some effort to get the patient more help and counseling, I'd feel better.  But I don't think so.  

Barbara Bronson Gray, MN, RN
Editor in Chief