When someone dies at home
With expanding options of home care and palliative care services we can expect to see more deaths outside our hospitals and aged care facilities.
The latest research shows that 70 per cent of Australians now wish to die at home, surrounded by friends and family. However, only 14% of people are passing away in the comfort of their own home often because advanced care planning has not been put in place. (Source: Dying Well, Grattan Institute 2014)
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- Written by: Sam Green, Funeral Director, Parkview Funeral Home
An inside view of outsider art
A recent show at Hobart’s MONA gallery prompts Dr Andrew Binns to reflect on the influence of ‘madness’ on art creation.
The linked question of what is art and who is an artist is forever under challenge and this came to the fore in a recently concluded exhibition at Hobart’s now-legendary Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Featuring a collection of nearly 2000 artworks from 200 non-professional artists from around the world, the so-called “Museum of Everything’ was first exhibited in London in 2009.
The founder and collector James Brett described it as the world’s first wandering institution for the untrained, unintentional, undiscovered and unclassifiable artists of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, adding that it questioned who can be considered an artist.
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- Written by: Andrew Binns
California greenin'
In early January 2018, licensed cannabis retailers opened their doors for recreational sales in California and not surprisingly business boomed. Dispensaries previously selling cannabis for medical use only have expanded to include recreational sales and are reporting record breaking profits. A veritable crop of new players have entered, and there is even a new bill in front of the California Senate that would allow marijuana companies to deliver their products to your door - think Uber Eats but for cannabis.
As an Australian living and working in Los Angeles from 2014 to 2018, it was fascinating to witness Californians’ relationship, consumption and broader cultural attitudes toward cannabis. In comparison to more conservative Australian sensibilities, recreational marijuana use was far from frowned upon and in some cases seen as a more sophisticated and even “healthier” alternative to drinking, or at least to being drunk.
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- Written by: Rachel Guest
Surgeon takes the long way home
It has taken Gratian (“gray-sh’n”) Punch more than two decades to return to Alstonville, the plateau village between Ballina and Lismore, where he was raised. He now lives less than a kilometer from his old family home, and on weekends, out cycling with his wife and young son, is likely to run across his mother.
If this sounds like he’s led a sheltered life, take note… after moving from Lismore’s Trinity Catholic College to a boarding school in Sydney (St Ignatius, Riverview) he entered the University of Sydney, completing degrees in Medical Science (First Class Honours) and Medicine before undertaking specialty training in general surgery, incorporating invasive training across all disciplines.
There were, however, unexpected diversions along the way.
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- Written by: Robin Osborne
The ins and outs of My Health Record
It seems a simple message – should one continue to have a My Health Record, which will soon apply to every Australian, or choose to opt out, a decision that must be made between 16 July and 15 October this year?
Announcing the option, backed by state and territory governments and key professional bodies, including the RACGP, the federal government issued a 1500-word media release - around four pages - appended by a footnote about the Australian Digital Health Agency (mission: Safe, Seamless, and Secure: evolving health and care to meet the needs of modern Australia).
Apparently the message is deceptively complicated, however, because many people appear to have little idea of what the MHR actually is, even though five million already have one.
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