Euthanasia cannot be legalised in QLD until palliative care improved

Doctors have cautioned that euthanasia cannot be legalised in Queensland until the state takes care of one of its glaring health inadequacies.

EUTHANASIA must not be legalised until Queensland’s substandard palliative care is improved enough that sick people would no longer rather die than navigate the broken system, doctors say.

Shocking examples of underresourcing have been laid bare by a consortium of the state’s leading palliative care physicians, who told MPs it was premature to consider allowing access to euthanasia without providing proper end-of-life-care choices.

Why Campbell Newman regrets not acting on voluntary euthanasia

Voluntary euthanasia: Campbell Newman urges Queenslanders to speak up on assisted dying

Letters to the Editor, The Courier-Mail, Monday, March 11, 2019

Queensland Specialist Palliative Care Services Medical Directors head Dr Greg Parker said palliative care was considered an optional extra as Queensland Health ignored its own guidelines and refused to hold Hospital and Health Services to account.

The committee heard:

● Patients requesting at-home care packages were often dead before they were delivered.

● Regional Queensland has had one palliative care specialist for the past 12 years but should have 8.

● Rockhampton boasts a “level five” cancer and palliative care service but has no palliative care physician.

● Pain-relief procedures that are standard in NSW hospitals are not available in Queensland.

● Many at-home packages don’t include a nurse.

● Nurses in aged care homes have no palliative care training so patients have to be sent to emergency departments.

● Figures are not kept on staff shortfalls.

Gold Coast director Dr Andrew Broadbent said a patient recently told him he would rather prefer imminent “death by palliative care” than live for up to a year in an aged care home.

“The choice of a nursing home should not be seen as something worse than death … and unfortunately that’s a sad indictment on society that they are the choices,” he said.

Sunshine Coast director Dr Louise Welch said the needs of patients were not met because they could not access personal care and equipment at home in their last months.

“The sad practicality is … we don’t even bother asking for an assessment because if they get a level four approval (for high level, at-home palliative care), they’ll die before they get it.”

Doctors said it was an enduring myth that palliative care operated on a “wink-and-a-nod” basis and drugs were only given to sedate distressed patients in their last hours when death was unavoidable.