I’m no professional, but the patient will likely not be able to swallow. It is the ICU she is speaking of. IV drip will be a slow and steady dose to keep a steady level rather than a sudden “hit” from an injection.
I once spoke with an ICU nurse who works nights. The scary thing I heard from her is the harvesting of organs. The body is still physically kept alive when they harvest. I didn’t have the heart to tell her directly, but I think she got the message that she needs to be careful about this. Kamma is not always fair.
I’m not sure about the whole process. There was also a recent story about an anesthesiologist who “did what she was told” and intentionally killed a patient for harvesting purposes. I think the brain was dead but the body was functioning. It needed drugs to stop the body from functioning. She confessed it 20 years later, knowing it was wrong. You can google this. There are a few cases known or maybe the same lady when I fact checked this with gpt.
So the issue at hand, when I saw this title, made me click and wonder, what if there were issues about harvesting organs before there is “true” death? They go by “brain death,” but in Buddhism the heart is where the consciousness is, and that is kept functioning until harvest.
In contrast, the heart stopping is not always an indicator of real death either, since CPR can bring one back. That is what “code” is all about in the OP. As buddhist we do not believe in Near Death Experiences. They are “near” to death. One might get insight as to other realms with NDE, but it is “near” to death rather than death itself. (do not intentionally try this).
I got very frightened that I would make a mistake in my speech when I spoke with my cousin who was on his last days and on his last few IV morphine days. He was coherent but said he was comfortable and didn’t feel a thing. As monks we need to be careful not to praise death in any form or way. My first words to him were, “As monks we must encourage you to live as long as possible.” Then we had our normal chat about life. I definitely would not want to be a worker in a hospice even though it might sound “insightful”. It is a battle zone and easy for bad kamma to be made. There is no such thing as mercy killing in Buddhism. It is killing by kāyadvāra. It is killing a human.
So while I didn’t tell the ICU nurse directly about this, I told her about the dhammas and to be careful. The ICU nurse on suttacentral probably has no idea about this angle that I am bringing to light.