Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Patients

  • RELIGION

    Euthanasia bill could put vulnerable Victorians at risk

    • Hoa Dinh
    • 22 September 2017
    22 Comments

    Euthanasia legislation would lead to further coercion against vulnerable persons in society: the elderly and people with disability. Once voluntary suicide is legalised, to continue living becomes a choice that people will have to justify to themselves, their family, and society. It is especially the case for persons who have to depend on the assistance of others: the elderly, and people with disability.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Is Medicare-for-all an idea whose time has come?

    • Lesley Russell
    • 18 September 2017
    1 Comment

    Medicare-for-all is best seen as aspirational: it is shorthand for policy ideals and papers over political realities. With Republicans in control of Congress, there is obviously no immediate chance of Sanders's bill becoming law any time soon. But with Republicans and the President viewed as ineffectual in implementing their healthcare commitments and uncaring about voters' concerns, it is advantageous for Democrats to be seen to have solutions to the problems that confront their constituents.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    A credibly Christian church would respect gay employees

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 August 2017
    47 Comments

    A threat reportedly made, and later denied, by some church leaders was to dismiss from employment in Catholic organisations people who contract same-sex marriages. The argument is that Catholic organisations must uphold the teaching of the church, and that upholding church teaching implies living in a way consistent with it. Whatever the abstract merits of this argument and its applicability to dismissal in limit cases, its general use belongs to a past age.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Using ignorance to know if mandatory drug testing laws are sound

    • Daniel Fleming
    • 14 August 2017
    16 Comments

    Sometimes ignorance can be a virtue in political decision-making. The great 20th century political philosopher John Rawls had a thought experiment called the “Veil of Ignorance” which he suggested should be applied to any political decision to test whether or not it is just. 

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Stock images strengthen chronic fatigue stigma

    • Evan Young
    • 14 July 2017
    4 Comments

    If used without thought, stock images can misrepresent and trivialise serious issues. I have the displeasure of living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a hugely misunderstood and devastating condition. When I see an article on CFS, it is almost always beneath a stock photo of somebody yawning or with head in hands. These images contribute to society's misapprehension that CFS is exclusively related to sleep, making it even tougher for patients to live in a world already hard enough to live in.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Data, distrust, and the disastrous My Health Record

    • Amy Coopes
    • 06 July 2017
    7 Comments

    Plagued by sluggish uptake, clinician reticence and a substantial privacy backlash, the $1.2 billion My Health Record has proven, thus far, something of a lemon. The putative benefits of an electronic health record have been expounded at length by the government. But for success there must be buy-in, and for buy-in, there must be trust, according to the Productivity Commission. Both are lacking, and it is important to consider why.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Health gap widens as wage growth falls

    • Amy Coopes
    • 26 June 2017
    7 Comments

    Universal health care is an ostensibly bipartisan prerogative, but what it actually means and how it's achieved is a somewhat moveable feast. Spending, we are told, is unsustainable as the population ages and we move toward ever-more personalised and technologically-advanced treatment paradigms. The objective of this rhetoric is to rationalise the privatisation of our health system by stealth. The latest wages figures are something of an inconvenient truth in this 'unsustainable spending' fiction.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The joyful duty of giving blood

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 01 June 2017
    4 Comments

    I'm pretty close to an ideal donor. I have a willing arm and good blood pressure. I'm glad I could help and now know my own blood type, but this is a system that works best when everyone who can pitches in. Giving blood is simple to do, feels good and is desperately needed. Though the blood service estimates that nine million Australians are eligible to give blood, only 500,000 are currently doing so. There must be other ideal donors out there waiting.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    The risk and future visioning of sustainable Catholic services

    • Frank Brennan
    • 29 March 2017
    1 Comment

    'We need to be more focused on grace, Christ and God's word, rather than just on law, the Church and papal utterances. But today, I will draw more on law, the Church and the Pope to point us towards those more fruitful domains: grace, Christ and God's word. Our future visioning needs to focus more on the gospel imperatives including the option for the poor and the dignity of all persons, including those who are non-believers.' Address to Catholic Health Australia's Catholic Governance Symposium, 27 March 2017

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Close the gap between public and private mental health care

    • Naomi Fryers
    • 10 February 2017
    10 Comments

    In my mid-20s, I sectioned under the Mental Health Act into the public inpatient system. The experience is so etched in my mind that it wasn't until recently, half a decade on, that I finally managed to shake the residual anxiety. A single admission to the public mental health system saw me crippled by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. By contrast, I've never had an inpatient admission to a private psychiatric hospital where I haven't been discharged in comparative good health.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Religious freedom in an age of equality

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 September 2016
    18 Comments

    'No good will be served by a royal commission auspiced by the state telling a Church how it judges or complies with its theological doctrines and distinctive moral teachings. By all means, set universal standards of practice expected of all institutions dealing with children, but do not trespass on the holy ground of religious belief and practice.' Fr Frank Brennan SJ addresses the Freedom for Faith Conference in Melbourne, 23 September 2016.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Exposed, illegal, adrift

    • Frances Roberts
    • 09 August 2016
    7 Comments

    This cramped corner of the decking planks is all you have on a pelagic wreck, a Medusa raft, splintered, rank ... Part of an interlocking human mat, you lie exposed and frightened, to escape the below deck stench of excrement and illness. Scant hope here of sleep ... The true villains in this outcome bask proudly in their stand firm against illegal entry by the family of man.

    READ MORE