Better technology to diagnose, treat and manage the disease early enough is needed to improve the survival rates of childhood cancer in sub Saharan Africa.
Among doctors, there seems to be broad consensus about the relevance of double effect in end-of-life care.
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Headlines pointed to the privatisation of hospital, end-of-life and dental services, but the Productivity Commission’s report is actually a lot less radical.
Having an advance care directive ensures your values and wishes are known, even beyond a time when you can no longer speak for yourself.
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At least one-third of patients receive non-beneficial treatments at the end of their life. Having a good advance care directive that you share with others helps them know and respect your wishes.
Research shows some families pressure doctors to attempt heroic interventions on elderly relatives.
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We found one third of patients near the end of their life received non-beneficial treatments in hospitals around the world. These included initiating chemotherapy and providing emergency surgery.
California is the fifth state to legalize aid in dying.
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Why have Americans become more receptive to aid in dying, a practice that was rejected throughout the United States until Oregon changed course in 1997?
Palliative care aims to comfort rather than cure.
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Palliative care should be a time of shared care; when the doctor continues treating their patient’s disease while symptom control and preparation for death track alongside.
There doesn’t need to be a choice between palliative care or assisted dying.
It’s possible the difference between Australia and the Netherlands (where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal) lies more in the way we think about what we are doing than what actually happens.
Hard going and not for everyone.
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Most people in western societies die in hospital or in institutional care. Keeping death out of sight and out of mind means few people have real experience of death and dying.
It’s the exceptional cases you hear about.
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The diagnosis of a palliative illness in a child or adolescent is devastating for all involved: parents, family members and the children themselves, as they grieve for life they had planned and believed…
We all have the legal right to refuse health care.
Warren Goldswain
Have you thought about how you would want to be treated if you cannot make your own decisions? You may be unconscious after car accident, you may be so ill you cannot communicate, or you may be dying and…
Every year around half a million people die in England. The success of medicine over the past decades has led to a sustained rise in the average human life expectancy: a third of children born today will…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne