Digital advance care planning helps to ease the ambulance ramping crisis
Ambulance ramping cases have been described as the “canaries in the healthcare coalmine”, with escalating pressures on hospitals exposed by delays in the transfer of patients into emergency departments. In some instances, ambulances are “ramped” for hours outside hospitals, waiting for available beds, and the crisis is expected to continue as Australia’s population ages and […]
What your GP does with your Advance Care Plan
Advance Care Plans are not written by lawyers or doctors. They are written by ordinary people like you. So you do not need to use legal or medical jargon. However, doctors and other medical staff play an important role in putting your Advance Care Plan into practice. But how do they actually do this? Read […]
Dementia and decision-making capacity
The idea of capacity when it comes to decision making is complex. The word is not well understood, and it’s not as simple as having capacity or not having capacity. Health professionals may say someone “has” or “has not” capacity, meaning they can or cannot make decisions, yet this is often unhelpful as there are […]
You Can’t Predict the Future, But You Can Plan For It
Working as a doctor, I have seen first hand what happens when we don’t face up to our mortality. The sad truths about hospital that no one tells you One night when I was on duty a 95 year old gentleman came into our hospital with severe flu and pneumonia. He caught the flu […]
What is palliative care, and what isn’t it?
Palliative care has been in Australia for years, but is often misunderstood. People often think that palliative care just means that they stop treating your illness and only treat your pain. Actually, it has a lot more to offer than just pain. But many are confused about what it actually is, so we’ve made it […]
