Report Shows Hospital Staff Wrote Off Patients With Disabilities
Before Deaths
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
November 22,
2006
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA--The Ombudsman for the Australian state of New
South Wales has found that people with disabilities who died last year while
receiving state services received limited medical care -- and were not
resuscitated -- because staff considered their "quality of life" to be
inferior.
Ombudsman Bruce Barbour's report, released Wednesday, concluded that
some hospital staff failed to follow official guidelines on end-of-life
treatment for patients with disabilities because those patients might have been
seen "to have a less valuable life than other people in the community."
Barbour's report also noted that hospitals failed to develop discharge
plan for patients with disabilities, leading some to be repeatedly readmitted
on the same day.
The report appears to support the argument -- made by many disability
rights advocates -- that legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide would put
the lives of vulnerable people at greater risk, especially at a time when
society and the medical profession view their lives as being less valuable or
intolerable.
Related:
Disabled patients
get worse care (Sydney Morning Herald)
Report -- Deaths of
people with disabilities in care (NSW Ombudsman)
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Reproduced here under special arrangement
with Inclusion Daily Express international disability rights news service.
© Copyright 2006 Inonit
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