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The Forum > Article Comments > A sugar coated poison pill for Victoria > Comments

A sugar coated poison pill for Victoria : Comments

By Paul Russell, published 10/6/2016

Sadly, however, the committee seems intent that, for those who cannot access such palliative care, being made dead is an option.

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Susan, Amie I have nothing but undying admiration for most of our nurses in most of our hospitals, for whom there will never ever be enough superlatives!

Yes I believe their should be choice, if its available as would be in a living will? I also believe routinely overdosing a patient with a lethal dose of opioids ought to be decriminalized.

I'm against charge nurses making life or death decisions that are seemingly signed off on by a registered doctor, who've never seen the patient?

As accepted custom? It's more common than most folks would allow themselves to believe!?

Things I've seen and can give eye witness accounts of, include an elderly lady, long time friend and former freedom fighter, who risked everything many times over, helping Australian POW's escape, being euthanized, without so much as by your leave or ceremony!

I was advised that it happens as accepted daily routine, as a clinical overdose given by an attending nurse with a key to a cabinet of oft times lethal drugs. And I was not Family!

I've seen dogs put down with more regret and less icy professionalism than I witnessed that day.

Then there was very valuable property owner, Bill, an MD and former Japanese POW, being bullied into a home far from family and friends.

Not everyone in attendance was silent. A senior nurse put her four bobs worth in, saying, you'll like it there Bill, they have a lovely duck pond! "PRIORITIES"!?

Another younger nurse just shook her head continually repeating, this's not right!

The two Ambos, who were going to provide transport, allegedly received a phone call summoning them to an emergency that disappeared, but only after Bill finally gave his grudging consent. Given a Nephew in law with power of attorney and a beneficiary was very definitely in the yes camp.

If there's money available to subsidize quite grossly profitable "private" health care, it should be diverted to provide far superior, more deserving outcomes than these eyewitness accounts!

A little and missing objectivity and less shooting the messenger would be useful Ladies!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 12 June 2016 9:14:46 AM
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AlanB, "'m against charge nurses making life or death decisions that are seemingly signed off on by a registered doctor, who've never seen the patient?"

You have no idea what you are talking about Alan. We don't have 'charge nurses' in hospitals anymore, they went out years ago. Any registered nurse can make a decision whether to give a prescribed medication to a patient or not.

It is currently unlawful for a doctor to write up, or a nurse to give, any end-of-life medications in Australia, so you are talking rubbish. Giving morphine to dying patients is lawful in the correct doses, and is very effective at making them comfortable in most cases. Yes, it makes it easier for them to relax and die. Nothing wrong with that.

As for all these old guys you think are bullied into going into nursing homes, well if you can come up with an affordable better solution for oldies who live alone and can no longer look after themselves, then please enlighten us?
Should we leave them on the floor in their homes after they fall and slowly die of cold and dehydration, alone and scared? Or should we leave them in beds in acute care hospitals while we tell other patients needing those beds that they will have to wait?
Posted by Suseonline, Sunday, 12 June 2016 5:27:18 PM
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I think the patient should always retain the right to return home, if he or she is reasonably mobile and care is available. Okay, you got me, charge nurses are a thing of the past or confined to military establishments? [Not so dictatorial tin Hitlers,]

Even so, giving folk with just a nurse's degree given the apparent right to administer a lethal dose of prescription medicine om their own cognizance, is just not on.

I take your point about the need to move patients out of hospital beds, but not your apparent approval of them being effectively prevented from returning home, particularly if their home can be auctioned off to pay for something imposed on a patient, unmistakably against their will?

This was a man with a healthy bank account, a generous pension, and the means to pay for a level of personal care! His valuable property, was just a stones throw from the base hospital. And could have served as a billet for off duty nurses from overseas, who he already knew, liked and trusted, as opposed to affordable out of town accommodation and after a long commute being hit with savage parking fees?

If I were the only witness that knew this was wrong for the hugely traumatized old digger, maybe your case would fly; which given the unnecessary trauma was not a lot better in his still active and alert mind, than those four dark years of unending nightmare!

I see from the tone and tenor of your posts a perceived inability to actually empathize with the (overly opinionated) old nuisances committed to your care? And need to be seen for what they are depicted as? Overly expensive useless wastes of space, who've arrived at their use by date?

HE MIGHT FALL?

So might anyone else under the right circumstances!

The ambos knew it wasn't right as did the other senior nurse!

You just go on self identifying by arguing for budgets and expediency as priority, regardless of the patent abuse of elders and their rights, that it seemingly gives rise to?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 12 June 2016 7:38:32 PM
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Congratulations, Alan. You might as well argue for government-controlled marriage or job allocation.

Hey, at least Zyklon B didn't take weeks or months to kill its victims. You've made Nazis look compassionate when the alternative is your paternalistic fascism.
Posted by AyameTan, Sunday, 12 June 2016 7:48:26 PM
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What's the go here, tag team elder abuse, and just because I have the unmitigated temerity to hold an unshakable contrary opinion?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 12 June 2016 8:14:22 PM
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Do you have a reason behind your opposition to choice, or is it just your fear of abuse?

Because let's face it. The current law IS being abused. People are being helped to die (and sometimes killed) against their will.

Paul Russell loves to say "If a law can be abused, it will be abused." But he never applied that standard to the laws against voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Posted by AyameTan, Sunday, 12 June 2016 8:21:03 PM
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