Hospitals and Healthcare

People with mental illness are at their most vulnerable when they're discharged from hospital. Without the support of family or friends at this time, they're less likely to recover.

How my repeated ER visits were part of my frustrating experience with a thyroid cancer odyssey.

Few want to think about their own deaths. And forms rarely capture the complexity of real-life medical decision-making. But there are ways to tackle these and other roadblocks.

'I said everything I could possibly think of to say. '

Margaret Radmore has spent her life watching people die. Now, she is facing her own mortality. She knows she doesn't want to endure the same pain. 

Taking ownership of my emotions and enjoying my survivorship has been empowering for me — and many others.

“Imagine this is the last day of your life. You won’t know which day it is but you will have a last day. Between now and then, carry yourself as if this is that last day.” So says Stephen Jenkinson, professor of theology at Harvard University and author of Die Wise and Come of Age.

In his five years working in palliative care – which he dubs “the death trade” – Jenkinson met hundreds of dying people and their families, and witnessed a ‘wretched anxiety’ around the end of life. He describes himself as a grief monger and exhorts us to die wise and well, unlike the masses in aged care institutions and hospitals all over the Western world.

In a talk that's by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, writer and podcaster Nora McInerny shares her hard-earned wisdom about life and death. Her candid approach to something that will, let's face it, affect us all, is as liberating as it is gut-wrenching. Most powerfully, she encourages us to shift how we approach grief. "A grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again," she says. "They're going to move forward. But that doesn't mean that they've moved on."

Have you spent time thinking about how you would like your final period of life to play out?

When a fit cyclist broke his back and suffered a stroke after an accident, his wasn't the only life that would change forever. Now he has been reunited with the nurse who has spent five years fighting for answers.

Morven-May MacCallum speaks out as GPs are urged to be vigilant about the infection spread by ticks.

Alisha Malhotra is using new technology to help her regain the power of speech.

Interventions to encourage patients in hospital for medical problems to get out of bed and walk around increases their mobility, without increasing falls risk.

What do the arts have to do with medicine? Dancer and medical researcher Jill Sonke explores the important relationship between creative expression and health for patients with serious medical illness.

As she watched her husband deteriorate, she pushed doctors to rethink what they were doing.