Friday, 19 July 2013
Palliative Care in Australia, working out what to say
I have a meeting with a politician next week to discuss my concerns related to Palliative Care in Australia as this issue was the reason I left working in Palliative Care in Australia and I'm not so sure about what to say about it all now.
I've worked as a nurse, a consultant, a project manager for establishing palliative care in North Queensland over the years, a strategic planner, a counsellor, an advocate...but it was my time in the clinical delivering of care that led, eventually, to me leaving this field.
It wasn't because of the sadness of the area but rather that people were suffering because they were missing out on good palliative care when the had chosen good palliative care over the mayhem and madness of the acute curative system. That 'mass techno-hysteria' of the acute realm.
There will be a national enquiry of some sort into the lack of good palliative care in nursing homes due to recent findings, but I left a palliative care unit because they weren't achieving good palliative care in that 'best of all possible places'.
I'm working now in Mental Health, which is fundamentally much easier than the angst experienced by watching too many, far too many people suffer from pain when they had actually signed up for pain relief in a dedicated palliative care unit.
So I'm not sure what to tell a politician about it all.
Palliative Care is a specialty, a real specialty, that can deliver excellent full pain control within 48 hours...it's a fine and decent and quite noble advanced human care specialty; the fact that over the past few years there is less expertise in it, and less care, and more a clinging to the demands of Oncology Research and Process really offends me as a health professional. I am very distressed that the great gains made in pain control are being discarded now as the focus shifts more to the incorporating or Palliative care into Oncology as a 'supportive care service' rather than what it really is: an excellent science that deals with end of life in a far superior and human way than Oncology can. Oncology, when it comes to end of life IS miserable and IS business. Palliative Care applies to far more people than Oncology has any connection to, as it should. People don't only die of cancer. The applications of palliative care therapies are far more useful and universal than to be contained within Oncology's narrow view. It applies to everyone who chooses it. It's not about cancer, per se. It's about the end of life and making sure that the end of life is decent and reasonable and honourable, no matter what the causal factor. We are mortals, goodness me.
The funding of Palliative Care has meant the Oncology Services have needed to extort money from it to continue with their miserable business. That's what I think is the truth. By doing so, an advanced human science based upon high skill and compassion is being 'ravaged' for funds to put into therapies in Oncology that don't work and have never worked for folk at the end of their lives. They can ask for palliative care but often what they get is a lot more pain and this really does offend me and upset me.
I've worked as a nurse, a consultant, a project manager for establishing palliative care in North Queensland over the years, a strategic planner, a counsellor, an advocate...but it was my time in the clinical delivering of care that led, eventually, to me leaving this field.
It wasn't because of the sadness of the area but rather that people were suffering because they were missing out on good palliative care when the had chosen good palliative care over the mayhem and madness of the acute curative system. That 'mass techno-hysteria' of the acute realm.
There will be a national enquiry of some sort into the lack of good palliative care in nursing homes due to recent findings, but I left a palliative care unit because they weren't achieving good palliative care in that 'best of all possible places'.
I'm working now in Mental Health, which is fundamentally much easier than the angst experienced by watching too many, far too many people suffer from pain when they had actually signed up for pain relief in a dedicated palliative care unit.
So I'm not sure what to tell a politician about it all.
Palliative Care is a specialty, a real specialty, that can deliver excellent full pain control within 48 hours...it's a fine and decent and quite noble advanced human care specialty; the fact that over the past few years there is less expertise in it, and less care, and more a clinging to the demands of Oncology Research and Process really offends me as a health professional. I am very distressed that the great gains made in pain control are being discarded now as the focus shifts more to the incorporating or Palliative care into Oncology as a 'supportive care service' rather than what it really is: an excellent science that deals with end of life in a far superior and human way than Oncology can. Oncology, when it comes to end of life IS miserable and IS business. Palliative Care applies to far more people than Oncology has any connection to, as it should. People don't only die of cancer. The applications of palliative care therapies are far more useful and universal than to be contained within Oncology's narrow view. It applies to everyone who chooses it. It's not about cancer, per se. It's about the end of life and making sure that the end of life is decent and reasonable and honourable, no matter what the causal factor. We are mortals, goodness me.
The funding of Palliative Care has meant the Oncology Services have needed to extort money from it to continue with their miserable business. That's what I think is the truth. By doing so, an advanced human science based upon high skill and compassion is being 'ravaged' for funds to put into therapies in Oncology that don't work and have never worked for folk at the end of their lives. They can ask for palliative care but often what they get is a lot more pain and this really does offend me and upset me.
Our New Home in Far North Queensland
Our neighbours are Chinese (Singapore & Shanghai (VERY traditional Chinese with their small gods etc) and Malaysian Chinese,Japanese,Papua New Guinean, and one Australian, me, and one English person on the third floor here). The Papua New Guineans have 6 children and are always cooking.
Our guests include a very cute small flying fox we named Xiao Fu: this is a lucky symbol in China...although I did scare him off with the masonry hammer drill; still we hope for his return to our balcony.
The 4 Curlew couples are lovely birds indeed calling out 'curlew curlew' at night, and scoot around at dawn and dusk in their noble life-long pairings, with their big eyes and fearsome self-respect.
The brown snake has come from the creek next door I expect, and has been accidently run over a few times now by folk in 4 wheel drives...and is at the moment 'spitting venom' about downstairs. I left him there in case the New Guinean kids want to play with him.
This complex was an interesting experiment in Chinese-type high-density living on a small scale in about 2008, before the big financial crash. Those who bought in early, all Australians, can't really afford to leave as the prices dropped $100,000 overnight.
There's spaces of really nice nature, huge towering old figs and jungly parts between the buildings, (the curlews love this) and the neighboring houses have great massive trees as well, which, from the 3rd floor here in the treetops provide a great outlook East all the way to Yarrabah mountains which we have re-named Wang Mountains.
In terms of Feng Shui, it's a brilliant little revolutionary 'uprising' of high density living on a pure North-South Chinese basis. The apartments are spacious and basically new. Good quality inside, and, in the Chinese tradition, a bit daggy outside so as not to promote envy and thieves. Everyone puts there washing up on lines on the balcony, as is the Asian tradition, and it is exceptionally inexpensive compared with clothes-driers. It is very similar to China high density living now, in design and pattern, although the complexes in China go straight up for 30 floors rather than 4. The prices here and in China in a regional small city for a place much the same are much the same now.
Being a two minute walk to the best Asian shops in Cairns, and with a very large super-market complex next door, it is amazingly quiet at night. So remarkably peaceful. Silent. Who ever designed it all did a great job; as I guess it was designed for some elite folks. Fortunately, due to the Crash of 2008, we live here now.
Cheers from here, looking out at Wang Mountain, Far North Queensland.
John
Our guests include a very cute small flying fox we named Xiao Fu: this is a lucky symbol in China...although I did scare him off with the masonry hammer drill; still we hope for his return to our balcony.
The 4 Curlew couples are lovely birds indeed calling out 'curlew curlew' at night, and scoot around at dawn and dusk in their noble life-long pairings, with their big eyes and fearsome self-respect.
The brown snake has come from the creek next door I expect, and has been accidently run over a few times now by folk in 4 wheel drives...and is at the moment 'spitting venom' about downstairs. I left him there in case the New Guinean kids want to play with him.
This complex was an interesting experiment in Chinese-type high-density living on a small scale in about 2008, before the big financial crash. Those who bought in early, all Australians, can't really afford to leave as the prices dropped $100,000 overnight.
There's spaces of really nice nature, huge towering old figs and jungly parts between the buildings, (the curlews love this) and the neighboring houses have great massive trees as well, which, from the 3rd floor here in the treetops provide a great outlook East all the way to Yarrabah mountains which we have re-named Wang Mountains.
In terms of Feng Shui, it's a brilliant little revolutionary 'uprising' of high density living on a pure North-South Chinese basis. The apartments are spacious and basically new. Good quality inside, and, in the Chinese tradition, a bit daggy outside so as not to promote envy and thieves. Everyone puts there washing up on lines on the balcony, as is the Asian tradition, and it is exceptionally inexpensive compared with clothes-driers. It is very similar to China high density living now, in design and pattern, although the complexes in China go straight up for 30 floors rather than 4. The prices here and in China in a regional small city for a place much the same are much the same now.
Being a two minute walk to the best Asian shops in Cairns, and with a very large super-market complex next door, it is amazingly quiet at night. So remarkably peaceful. Silent. Who ever designed it all did a great job; as I guess it was designed for some elite folks. Fortunately, due to the Crash of 2008, we live here now.
Cheers from here, looking out at Wang Mountain, Far North Queensland.
John
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