Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Doctor

  • RELIGION

    How do we navigate medico-legal questions without a bill of rights?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 03 December 2015

    The consideration of medico-legal problems in the public square of a pluralistic democratic society keeping pace with profound technological change is often marked by simplistic assertions, precluding considerations of comprehensive world views, whether religious or philosophical. It is now commonplace for doctors to be told to leave their consciences at the door, as their patients are consumers and they are suppliers and of course the market decides. Debates about law and policy are often resolved with simplistic assertions about individual rights and autonomy, with little consideration for the public interest, the common good, and the doctor-patient relationship. Even conscience is said to be a matter for contracting out. This evening I ask whether there are more compelling ways to resolve medico-legal dilemmas, while conceding a limited role for law in determining the range of acceptable answers.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Melbourne medicos bring detained children into the light

    • Justin Glyn
    • 13 October 2015
    9 Comments

    Health care professionals at the Royal Melbourne Children's Hospital have begun to do what could not be achieved by reports from the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Australia's Human Rights Commission. The doctors and staff are refusing to release children they treat back to the detention which caused their problems in the first place. By this brave act has begun the slow task of pouring daylight (always the best antiseptic) into this gaping wound in Australian society.

    READ MORE

  • The insights of Pope Francis in shaping Catholic health and aged care

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 August 2015
    7 Comments

    When addressing Italian doctors last November, Pope Francis quoted St. Camillus de Lellis who suggested that the most effective method in caring for the sick was simply to 'Put more heart into those hands.' Let's do something to change the market settings and political settings here in Australia to modify the behaviour of all Australians in the future, and let's attend to our own Franciscan interior ecological conversion with our care for the vulnerable.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Whistleblowing and other new crimes

    • Fatima Measham
    • 26 June 2015
    7 Comments

    Ministerial discretion over citizenship can't replace court processes. Such executive overreach, which contradicts democratic principle, has already found expression in law. From July 1st, workers involved in immigration detention, including doctors and teachers, are subject to two years imprisonment for speaking publicly about what they witness. In other words, whistleblowing has been penalised.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A larrikin look at sinful sugar

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 12 March 2015
    2 Comments

    Gameau's quest takes him to the Northern Territory, where the prevalence of high-sugar beverages has taken a dire toll upon Indigenous communities, whose access to nutritious foods has been stymied by government policy. Also to America, where he yarns with food industry spin doctors and witnesses the excruciating dental procedure a Kentucky teenager endures to reverse the effects of 'Mountain Dew Mouth'.

    READ MORE
  • CARTOON

    Just what the spin doctor ordered

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 27 August 2014

    View this week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Planning for a good death

    • Michele Gierck
    • 26 May 2014
    9 Comments

    The ambulance has brought my 88-year-old mother to the Accident and Emergency ward at the local public hospital. In answering the doctor's question about resuscitation, I'm so thankful that my mother's wishes have been made clear, and documented by her general practitioner, by means of an Advance Health Directive.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Discussing a good death with Philip Nitschke

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 February 2014
    25 Comments

    I was able to mix with other writers bemoaning Australia's refugee policy including the obfuscation about the death of an asylum seeker on Manus Island and Julie Bishop's latest diplomatic initiative asking Hun Sen to accept refugees from Australia for permanent resettlement in Cambodia. I came away wondering how passionate refugee advocates could be so sanguine about doctor administered death even for children.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    $6 co-payment not what the doctor ordered

    • Michael Mullins
    • 24 February 2014
    22 Comments

    Health minister Peter Dutton has refused to dismiss the possibility that a $6 ‘co-payment’ for GP visits could be announced in the May Federal Budget. This would be no more than a quick and easy temporary fix that would penalise ordinary Australians. It would simply defer the government's need to tackle the vested interests that are arguably the major cause of the inefficiencies that have made our health care system prohibitively expensive.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    AIDS outlaw battles Big Pharma

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 20 February 2014
    3 Comments

    Homophobic Texan electrician Ron learns he has AIDS and may have only 30 days to live. Desperate for a cure, he heads to Mexico, where a disgraced doctor treats him with unapproved pharmaceutical drugs. Ron begins to smuggle the drugs into the US, to distribute to other AIDS sufferers, including Rayon, a trans woman who becomes Ron's friend, business partner, and ally against the Big Pharma interests that try to shut him down.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    The healing God of the Royal Commission

    • Fatima Measham
    • 12 April 2013
    14 Comments

    The Church is unique among the institutions under scrutiny from the Royal Commission. The trust laypeople hold in priests and other vowed religious is not the same trust held in teachers, doctors and coaches. It is sourced from the stories that feed their faith. This is the context in which the betrayal must be understood. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Divorce, sexuality and the cult of self-improvement

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 12 July 2012
    2 Comments

    The therapist's office is a place where frankness is imperative, and self-examination an artform. Among the current batch of patients are a displaced Indian widower, and a gay teen with a self-destructive streak. The audience is left to ponder whether the doctor or the patient is the more deeply disturbed.

    READ MORE