Journal of law and medicine
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The law regulating medical end-of-life decisions aims to support patients to receive high-quality health care. It does so through ensuring treatment received reflects the person's wishes and values and protecting health professionals who provide adequate pain and symptom relief even if that treatment may coincidentally hasten death. ⋯ While participants' decision-making practices were often underpinned by a legal framework, the role of the law was largely invisible. Community education is needed for the public to know their legal rights and responsibilities, and to understand that the law plays a role in supporting end-of-life decision-making.
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Medical device regulation was an important element of Australia's response to COVID-19. Early policy initiatives included expedited assessments of COVID-19 diagnostic tests and enhanced communications and information provision. Emergency exemptions enabled continuity of supply of diagnostic tests and personal protective equipment including face masks, and formed part of contingency planning regarding ventilator capacity. ⋯ Increased compliance activities and infringement notices focused particularly on importation and advertising issues. Medical device regulatory initiatives effectively aligned with broader public policy objectives and helped achieve crucial collaboration between government and industry. Australia's principles-based regulatory framework adapted well to the challenges of COVID-19.
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This column discusses the potential for conflict between the Federal laws forbidding the use of telecommunications to spread "suicide-related materials" and the laws in Victoria and Western Australia which have legalised forms of voluntary assisted dying. The column argues that the effect of the State laws is to differentiate the legal forms of voluntary assisted dying from suicide and assisted suicide, with the effect that Federal prohibitions do not apply to telecommunications between health practitioners and their patients regarding voluntary assisted dying.
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Front-line health care personnel, including anaesthetists, otolaryngologists, and other health professionals dealing with acute cases of coronavirus, face a high risk of infection and thus mortality. The scientific evidence establishes that to protect them, hospital protocols should require that wearing of the highest levels of personal protective equipment (PPE) be available for doctors and nurses performing aerosol-generating procedures, such as intubation, sputum induction, open suctioning of airways, bronchoscopy, etc. of COVID-19 patients. Although several international bodies have issued recommendations for a very high-level PPE to be used when these procedures are undertaken, the current PPE guidelines in Australia have tended to be more relaxed, and hospital authorities relying on them might not comply with legal obligations to their employee health care workers. Failure to provide high-level PPE in many hospitals is of concern for a large number of health care workers; this article examines the scientific literature on the topic and provides a legal perspective on hospital authorities' possible liability in negligence.
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The purpose of this article is to report some Victorian doctors' general perspectives and knowledge of the new Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic) (VAD Act). Under the VAD Act, doctors are constructed as the only legal providers of VAD in Victoria. Doctors who are unwilling to participate in VAD therefore constitute a barrier to patient access. ⋯ It also explores participants' understanding of the specific role required of doctors under the law. It finds that participants equate their support for the Act with biomedical ethical principles and generally hold a level of knowledge of the law which is not comprehensive but improves with greater exposure to VAD applications. This study serves as a temperature check of this key stakeholder group's perspectives on the VAD Act in the first eight months of its operation.