Palliative care makes euthanasia unneccesary: Dr Hames and UNDA expert.
By Anthony Barich
The tragic cases put forward by euthanasia advocates do not reflect the state of Palliative Care in WA and do not justify euthanasia laws, State Health Minister Dr Kim Hames told The Record.
Dr Hames, a former general practitioner, told the paper he is personally against legalising euthanasia, and said that West Australian cancer patients are well managed and that the terminally ill are not generally in pain.
The State’s specialist cancer centre at Charles Gairdner Hospital is in the process of being expanded, and there is “very strong liaison” with Palliative Care services and alternative support therapies.
“The debate wont go away, we just have to keep putting forward the arguments” against the need for euthanasia, Dr Hames told The Record.
“The problem is, cancer gets tied up in the euthanasia debate. They’re talking cancer and people start thinking ‘I’d want to die if I had it’, but Palliative Care allows people to have that very comfortable end of life.”
In May he announced a $14 million Palliative Services Project Fund to be rolled out over four years, including: Palliative Care services for every rural region across WA; paediatric Palliative Care services to support terminally ill children and their families in their local communities; and implementation of care pathways to ensure terminally ill patients receive timely care according to their needs, in the place of their choice.
Palliative Care Area Health Teams in the Perth metropolitan region will be developed in order to build links between health services and to boost patients’ access to care close to where they live; a workforce development program will help ensure patients’ health care needs can be met.
“Palliative Care is an extremely important area as we prepare for an ageing population and the resulting demands on the health system,” Mr Hames said when announcing the fund.
Associate Professor Gavin Frost, Dean of Medicine at the University of Notre Dame Australia’s Fremantle campus, said the government needs to ensure more Palliative Care specialists are trained to ensure that patients with debilitating conditions are cared for on all fronts.
“A concern for some who are dying is how they pay off debts or fix broken relationships with family. Governments need to ensure there are adequately resourced Palliative Care centres with well-trained staff across the whole spectrum of healthcare staff,” Prof. Frost said.
“Care makes the difference between people wanting euthanasia, and having good deaths. Palliative Care means euthanasia is totally unnecessary.”
Prof. Frost, formerly Senior Medical Advisor of the AIDS and Communicable Diseases branch of the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health, said the advent of AIDS prompted a greater focus on Palliative Care, adding that some doctors don’t like to talk with patients about death, as they are in the business of curing.
He said medical students should know that there is always more to be done in Palliative Care if a patient’s condition is beyond their level of expertise. He said all first-year medical students at UNDA are taught how to give people bad news for incurable conditions and spend two weeks with Margherita Nicoletti, Director of Hospice and Palliative Care Services at St John of God Murdoch Community Hospice.
He said that for doctors, referring people to specialists much earlier on means “being able to discuss death with people, which is tough for doctors, because if you’re an expert in cures then it means you’ve failed”.
“People don’t want to hear or talk about death and dying, until there’s absolutely no way of avoiding it,” he said.