'Two converging fronts' spark fears for end-of-life doctors
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Doctors in palliative and aged care facilities may be walking away from their fields out of fear of being punished for overprescribing opioids or accused of facilitating voluntary assisted dying.
Anecdotal evidence of a “perfect storm” of “two converging fronts” – a national crackdown on high prescription rates for opioids, and fears of palliative care being misconstrued as assisted dying – shows some practitioners are scared of being falsely accused when trying to provide quality care to their patients.
Queensland Professor Geoffrey Mitchell, along with peers from QUT, the University of New England and the University of Technology Sydney studied the consequences of these two issues in a new paper.
Published in the peer-reviewed Medical Journal of Australia on Monday, the paper concluded that in Australia, out of 12 death cases taken to court, no doctor had been criminally charged.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sbsnews-topstories/~3/2io1UarGQjc/a-breakthrough-and-funding-pledge-for-one-of-australia-s-most-common-cancers
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