Pomegranate Health
Pomegranate Health is an award-winning podcast about the culture of medicine, from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. We ask how doctors make difficult clinical and ethical decisions, how doctor-patient communication can be improved, and how healthcare delivery can be made more equitable.
This is also the home of [IMJ On-Air], a podcast to accompany the RACP's Internal Medicine Journal. Interviews with authors are conducted by specialist section editors. Find out more at the website www.racp.edu.au/podcast and get in touch via the address podcast@racp.edu.au
Pomegranate Health
Ep105: When parents and paediatrics clash
Last November an NHS Hospital Trust in Nottingham sought permission from the UK High Court to withdraw life support from a seven-month old girl called Indi Gregory. The devastated parents did not want to give up on her although they were advised there was no hope of treatment for her profound developmental disability. The family and the medical teams returned to court two more times, right up to the day that Indi was to be extubated.
Conflicts over care have always existed but their frequency has increased as medicinal advances present more options for intervention even in the sickest patients. Added to that, the online media environment allows advocacy campaigns to grow until they spill onto the streets outside hospitals and courtrooms.
This heightened tension causes moral injury both to parents and healthcare staff looking after child patients. The Medical Mediation Foundation has developed a conflict management framework to help avoid or de-escalate such disputes and keep attention focused on the best interests of the patient. In this podcast we hear from the director of the foundation, as well as three staff from the Starship Hospital, Auckland who have undertaken this training.
Guests
Sarah Barclay (Director, the Medical Mediation Foundation)
Dr Louise Webster MBChB RANZCP FRACP (Paediatric Consult Liaison Team, Starship Hospital)
Dr Fiona Miles FRACP FFICANZCA (Paediatric Intensivist, Starship Hospital)
Fiona McIver (nurse specialist, Starship Hospital)
Production
Produced by Mic Cavazzini DPhil. Recording assistance in Auckland from Dinesh Kumar. Music courtesy of FreeMusic Archive includes ‘December’ by Kai Engel. Music licenced from Epidemic Sound includes ‘Ikigai’ by Twelwe and ‘Pulse Voyage by Chill Cole. Image by Photodisc licenced from Getty Images.
Editorial feedback kindly provided by RACP physicians Michael Herd, Rosalynn Pszczola, Rachel Murdoch, Sasha Taylor, Zac Fuller, Rahul Barmanray, David Arroyo, Rachel Bowden, Chris Leung, Fionnuala Fagan, Thazin Thazin and Aidan Tan.
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