In the five-year period between 2011–12 and 2015–16 there was a nearly 30 per cent growth in palliative care hospitalisation. Add to this the 160,00 Australians who die each year – 70 per cent due to expected causes – a ...

“Dying is an art, like everything else.” So said Sylvia Plath in her poem, Lady Lazarus. And like any art, it is often hard to fathom what works best: and with dying we only get one chance to get it ...

What if changes to policies, procedures and culture in long-term aged care could reduce unnecessary antibiotics and improve consumer care and antimicrobial stewardship in the future? Many consumers of long-term care are prescribed antimicrobials that are for unconfirmed infections. Urinary ...

Bidyadanga is a small town in the Kimberley region of WA. Approximately 1590km north of Perth and 180km south of Broome. It is the definition of a remote Aussie town. It’s home to around 800 people with five different language groups, and ...

“You don’t know.” Jac Mathieson, the chief nursing officer at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, found herself saying this a lot when talking about the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act, soon to be law in Victoria. In this instance she was asked, ...

This issue of psychotropics has been front and centre during the Royal Commission, but not much time has been devoted to the reason behind its use, mental illness. Approximately half of all aged care residents exhibit symptoms consistent with depression, ...

Pressure injuries are expensive for our health system, hugely distressing for patients and, most of all, preventable and predictable. That is according to UTS professor of nursing Debra Jackson. “They are so distressing,” she said. “Once a person gets a ...

Quiet and private, or isolated and hard to manage. These are the flipsides in the increasing argument for and against single occupancy hospital rooms. There is a growing trend internationally for single occupancy rooms, but the dearth of literature in ...