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Death Ed
Doctors call for death education in schools.
Death education should be taught in the classroom to demystify ageing and dying among younger Australians, Queensland doctors have argued.
Australian Medical Association Queensland said young people need to be educated about medical, legal and other issues that surround ageing and dying so they can make informed choices when the time comes.
Dr Richard Kidd, AMA Queensland chair of general practice, said more than any other generation, Australia’ s youth will need to understand advance care plans and will also need to know how to make a will.
“ Including these sorts of issues or death education in science, legal studies, health and other school subjects will help build this understanding,” Kidd said.
Palliative Care Queensland has backed the move. Its chief executive, Shyla Mills, said death education in schools would also assist young people to become more resilient about loss, ageing, dying and grief.
“ They will be far more likely to be involved in the dying process of their relatives, work colleagues and friends than previous generations,” Mills said.“ They will need to be very resilient, more compassionate and develop a positive, proactive approach to death.
“ While there is pressure on educators to add more material into the school curriculum, death is our only 100 per cent guarantee in life, and the effects of our ageing population will be felt most by those at school today.”
Death education would also help prevent young people from adopting their parents’ anxieties and concerns about the issue, Kidd said.
“ In many families, death is a bit of a taboo topic that only gets discussed at crisis points,” he said.“ Death education at school would help remove any stigma.”
AMA Queensland also held that adolescents aren’ t too young to be thinking about making their own advance care plans.
Kidd said:“ We’ ve seen sad cases of young men getting terrible injuries playing sport, and it would have helped their families and doctors enormously if they knew how these young men wanted to be cared for in their last days.” ■
Drug rise warning
Potentially inappropriate medication use increases following dementia diagnosis.
A new diagnosis of dementia in older people can bring with it a rise in unnecessary medication use, an international study has found.
Led by the University of Sydney, the study of nearly 2500 people explored the patterns of medication use from one year prior to dementia diagnosis to one year after, compared to patterns of medication use in people without dementia.
It found that following a diagnosis of dementia in older people, medication use increased by 11 per cent in a year, and the use of potentially inappropriate medications increased by 17 per cent.
Potentially inappropriate or unnecessary medications included sleeping tablets, pain drugs, depression drugs and acid reflux drugs( proton pump inhibitors).
Lead author Dr Danijela Gnjidic, NHMRC dementia leadership fellow and senior lecturer from the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, said these medications are recommended for short term use but are commonly used long term by people with dementia.“ A number of reasons may account for this, including inadequate guidelines, lack of time during physician patient encounters, diminished decision-making capacity, difficulties with comprehension and communication, and difficulties in establishing goals of care.”
Published in Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, the findings highlight the importance of weighing up the harms and benefits of taking potentially unnecessary medications as they may lead to an increased risk of side effects such as sedation or drowsiness, and adverse drug events such as falls, fractures and hospitalisation, Gnjidic said.
“ Further efforts are clearly needed to support better recognition of potentially inappropriate medications to minimise possible harms, and warrants interventions to minimise such prescribing.
“ For Australians living with dementia and their caregivers, the key is to communicate closely with general practitioners, pharmacists and other health professionals to make informed decisions and to practise good medicine management techniques to minimise the risk of side effects,” she said.
Gnjidic added de-prescribing unnecessary medications may improve an individual’ s quality of life and reduce unnecessary healthcare costs.
The research was conducted in collaboration with Yale University and the University of Kentucky. ■
6 agedcareinsite. com. au