How do we know?

The term ‘dying matters’ is so popular and relevant to today’s issues that it has been taken up by the National Council for Palliative Care in the United Kingdom.

Last year the National Council for Palliative Care launched a public health promotion called the Dying Matters Coalition.

Although the not for profit site http://www.dyingmatters.org is not affiliated with this website in anyway it is well worth exploring.

A coalition, for those of you who are not quite sure, is a collaborative alliance among individuals or groups, which cooperates in joint action, each with their own self interest, that joins forces together for a common cause. The common cause in this instance is the goal of raising awareness and expertise in matters relating to end of life care.

It is our view that anything that raises the profile of death and dying with the aim of improving our life and death situations gets the thumbs up.

Joshua Keating from Foreign Policy makes some honest observations in  The List :  Five Disease Outbreaks That Are Worse Than Swine Flu.

Look   here to review the article.

Pieta Lang has created a new not for profit website that offers an overview of funeral options services and costs. In a  recent interview on ABC Lifematters  Pieta discusses the various issues relating to the costs of death.

Check  here to hear for yourself.

A recent article in The Art of Healing which was reviewing Dr Mohamed Khadra’s recent novel The Patient cites him questioning how we ration our health dollar .

The point is made that we currently invest 42c in the dollar on care for patients who are in their last month of life while others wait up to three years for surgery to relieve pain and suffering when comparitively simple procedures could improve their quality of life.

He also makes the point that in the last 10 years there has been a 90 per cent increase in bureaucracy coupled with a 70 per cent decrease in hospital bed numbers.

hmm………

The pain of loss.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAwu88ydStk&feature=related

What is your particular view?

Socrates famously said  ‘ that the unconsidered life is not worth living.’

He meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it, to the fullest extent possible.

It is my intention to develop a catalogue of other people’s thoughts on this subject and publish them for us all to ponder. Please let us know what works for you.

If you would like to leave a comment please do so here. Your opinions and suggestions regarding this evolving website are welcome.

The team from  Bandolier, an independent journal about evidence based healthcare has published some interesting facts relating to risk and death.

It seems that the risk of dying by shark attack was 1 in 913,200,766  and that you are more likely to die from a hot water tap!

To explore some more interesting facts about shark attack check  here. (I think these figures could be influenced by your location!)

Whereas the risk of dying by meteorite impact is only 1 in 765 million.

A number of options have been put forward for reforming Australia’s health system. It is my intention to present the current options and hypothetically explore how each option impacts upon end of life care. Stay tuned  -  this could take some time.

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2009/06/15/two-health-reformers-speak-out/     provides some interesting debate and discussion about health reform and current opinion.

This is amazing! Log onto the link to check out the interactive representation of how diseases are linked by common genes.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/05/science/20080506_DISEASE.html#