A guiding light for Toowoomba
IN THE shadow of death, Dr John Hall provides a guiding light.
The Darling Downs doctor’s compassion and medical knowledge eases the process of dying for people in the last months, weeks and days of their lives.
Toowoomba residents can access specialist inpatient and community palliative care services.
This means professionals such as Dr Hall, nurse practitioners and other medical experts can visit people in their own homes and in aged care facilities or the local hospice as well as support them in hospital.
As well as supporting patients, these professionals guide carers to provide the ongoing medical help – such as administering medication – that their loved ones need so they can die at home.
“The benefits of being at home is that you can set up hospital-type facilities in the home,” Dr Hall said.
“This means that patients are in their own environment, they’ve got the security and comfort of being in their own space.
“When you look at that space and you see families sitting around the bed chatting, it doesn’t look like a hospital – it looks like a home.”
Dr Hall said it was important for people to document their end-of-life choices and discuss them with relatives before they experienced medical complications that rendered them voiceless.
“Talking about death is something that we as a community don’t do very well but it’s something that needs to be done while people have their full faculties,” he said.