Page 278 - Week 01 - Thursday, 24 February 1994
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palliative care service provides for an average of 30 patients in the ACT at any one time. These patients are maintained comfortably within their own homes. No-one is suggesting that these patients should be confined to a hospital bed in order to die.
The philosophy of palliative care supports the notion of dying at home and, where this is not possible, providing a facility and an atmosphere as homelike as possible for those patients who cannot be managed in their own homes. If we take Mrs Carnell's logic in relation to the hospice on Acton to one conclusion, she would argue that people ought not to be dying in their own homes, that they ought to be near a hospital. It is the same logic. I fully expect the ACT to continue to lead the other States by supporting our nursing staff and general practitioners to extend their expertise into palliative care, not confine it to a major hospital. This will be possible where there is a genuine commitment to the philosophy of palliative care and where the system supports and encourages that philosophy.
I cannot deny that sometimes acute intervention will be necessary to limit pain, but that occurs at home as well. If you use your argument for home care, you would say that they ought not to be at home. While most palliative care treatments such as blood transfusions can be managed on the hospice premises, there are a small number of both hospice and home-care patients who will require interventions in an acute hospital. Radiotherapy, for example, can be used for stabilisation and pain control, and in other States this is the primary reason given for transfer of a hospice patient to a major hospital. While the Opposition is continually arguing that the hospice should be located at Calvary Hospital, if this were to happen the patients would still need to be transported to Woden Valley Hospital for radiotherapy treatment. What a silly bunch of people you are!
The patients who are likely to use the hospice are among the most vulnerable in our community. It is important that we accord them the respect they deserve - not by taking short cuts or by counting every dollar, but by providing them with the best the community has to offer. Care should be provided in a facility that is dedicated to their needs and to the needs of their families. It is starting to sink in. I hear silence over the way. We have the opportunity now in Canberra to provide just such a facility. While I am disappointed that we cannot build the specific purpose facility we first envisaged, we are able to provide for all the needs of the hospice patients in a refurbished building in the peaceful and tranquil environment of Acton Peninsula. The hospice working party is currently examining the plans of the existing buildings and determining what needs to be done to make these buildings as homelike as possible. The refurbishment will be undertaken in an imaginative and innovative way and will focus totally on the needs of the clients and the most cost-effective and efficient way the health system can meet those needs.
I believe that the time has come to put aside differences in view and concentrate fully on the needs of the palliative care patients in the ACT, but I know that Mrs Carnell will not do that. A press release and a headline is far better for her than good sense. An integrated palliative care program will provide for the coordination of services across the hospitals, the hospice and the home based program. We have a golden opportunity in Canberra to pursue a philosophy of care and a program of education for the best practice in palliative care that will be unsurpassed in Australia, and we are not going to let the inane arguments of the Opposition interfere with our judgment in this respect.
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