Palliative Care Case Study: Melissa's Health and Care Planning

This case study presents the situation of Melissa, a 37-year-old woman diagnosed with stage four cancer, and explores her journey through palliative care and advance care planning in Australia. The assignment delves into the concept of advance care planning, highlighting its significance in empowering individuals to make informed decisions about their end-of-life care, considering their values and preferences. It discusses the nine standards of palliative care approved by the Australian government and the legal framework surrounding voluntary assisted dying, including the eligibility criteria and the roles of healthcare professionals. The case study provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges faced by patients and families, emphasizing the importance of support systems and the role of healthcare providers in ensuring quality care during critical times.

Palliative Care Case Study

INTRODUCTION
Australian government has provided several health and care provisions to their general
public which help them a lot in circumstantial situations. One of most popular and pronominal
provision is “Advance care planning”. This program specializes in taking care and decision of a
person who believes that after a certain point of time they wont be able to speak for themselves.
This decision is completely on the person who wants to seek such facilities and decisions made
later are based upon persons proper conversation with their family, personal moral values and
preference in life (Abel and Kellehear (2016)).
Case scenario
A 37 year old woman named as Melissa was diagnosed with fourth stage cancer 12
months ago. She has two children named as Joshua and Emma, she is an assistant at a publishing
company. Also, her divorced husband lives just across some lanes within a 15 min drive passage.
Both her parents are above age 60 and have diabetes and COPD issues. She has been consulting
several oncologists and all results show her poor recovery rate from her illness. Since, then she is
concerned about her children's care and future. She was recommanded new program known as
Advance care planning, as she discovered about this concept and booked appointment with
advanced care consultants rendering health services which they also prepared for Melissa
(Bajwah and et. al. (2015)).
In this case topic to discuss over health situation of Melissa, “the right to determine the time and
place to die” is discussed briefly.
In Australian and many other countries need of palliative care is a must, their have been
several new programs which support this cause and voluntarily support in improving health and
rendering sophisticated care to people who become unable to speak and provide themselves help
in such condition of illness. Its a proper formal format system which give special treatment in
last few dying days or months. It works on a scale of 9 standards which the Australian
government has approved and is provided on their official website and mentioned below as well:
 Standard 1: In this first initial step the health and stabilisation of person is recorded plus a
spiritual, social, psychological and cultural experience is given as according to their
needs.
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 Standard 2: Patient with their family and friends are supposed to decide and make a plan
or aim preparations of taking care and precautions(Carolan, Forbat and Smith, (2016)).
 Standard 3: The whole family is provided a guide of maintaining their roles and duties in
the initial stages of this procedure.
 Standard 4: The rules or provisions created are based upon needs required by person plus
their preference, aims and values are taken in perspective before taking any decision.
 Standard 5: ensure a smooth process without any difficulties to patient.
 Standard 6: the support from family and loved ones shall be provided at losses and grief
situations (Centeno and Rodríguez-Núñez (2015)).
 Standard 7: It works on perfect mix of both palliative and end of life care.
 Standard 8: the services provided are of qualitative work and shall keep improving with
improvisations.
 Standard 9: People who are hired for this job are highly qualified and keep a professional
development through their support and care.
The government is very supportive in such circumstances and it give many provisions and
support laws to help out their citizens. One of such systems are “voluntary assisted dying”.
First of all this has become legal lawful choice for all Victorians in Australia, it has made
them voluntarily eligible to take such decisions if they feel reach to a point of no recovery. In
this program doctors only seek patients with medical condition of dying within 6-12 months. In
history Victoria in Australia was declared first state to declare such laws, here all terms &
provisions are according to patient and a 'implementation taskforce' is assigned to this project to
maintain all standards and scale(Clements-Cortes (2016)). Preparation for such things is very
critical but it shall be possible to understand the concept after the following explanation (We
don’t know all the details of how voluntary assisted dying will work yet but the system is ready):
1. Basic concept of voluntary assisted dying
In such situations generally the person who becomes eligible for such program, who is
suffering from certain illness which will not recover and reach to a point where person will be
declared dead within 6-12 months. Media is covering stream of making people aware of this lw
pass by government, it is created by health professionals to not accept such laws as its going to
become issue in their field. This process works by acquiring two professional doctors for a dying
person to render treatment to dying easy and quick death(Henneghan and Schnyer, (2015)).
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2. Doctors perspective on this program.
The whole base line of this law depends upon two professional doctors who willingly
want to assist a dying person. Both shall approach the person in which one will render the
services to provide correct medication and prescribing treatment and the second doctor shall
become the administration of giving proper medication to patient if they are unable to intake
them or refuse to do so. Some doctors have refused and rejected this term in working voluntarily
because of their personal reasons. Plus all this procedure is first approached to government and
after being approved by Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board (Hennemann-Krause and et.
al., (2015)). Here, the main role is of doctors who willingly wan to serve the society and take
care of such patients.
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