#healthcarechat

Welcome to #healthcarechat.

We will be meeting each Thursday between 8-9 pm GMT (currently +1 as its BST) on twitter via a chat facility called Stanzr. You can register or log in with your facebook or twitter account at http://stanzr.com/healthcarechat

We hope that the topics are informative and interesting for anyone working in the healthcare field. This is an open community and we welcome people from different countries, healthcare spheres and healthcare users. We want to be as inclusive as we can so anyone with an interest can be involved. Each month we will have an open mic session where any questions can be posed to the community and we will be asking for topics from you as a community as well as thinking of them ourselves. We also hope to invite authors and interesting speakers along to become the focus of chats every now and then.

Each week there will be a couple of blog postings here and on Ali Handscomb's Blog  to discuss our chosen topic and pose four questions. Hopefully it will get you ready for the chat and prepare you to think about the topics and questions we will be posing throughout the hour.

We will ask you to introduce yourselves at first so we get to know each other as a community. Carol or Ali will try to always welcome you by name but if the conversation is fast paced and we miss we dont mean to be rude at all nudge us!

As we move through the blog we will ask each question as Q1 - 4 and we would encourage you to put A1 - 4 before each answer and to always use the hashtag when answering. Using a question format makes keeping up with the twitter stream far more simple for everyone following.

At the end of each week we will ask people to post a Take Away which is basically the top thing they have learned form the chat in 140 characters.

It is easier to follow chats on something like tweet deck because then you can open up a column just for the chat and are not distracted by other tweets during the hour. For some really fast paced chats people often also open up twitter and look at the moderators stream as well but it is not always necessary.

As the chat develops we will be posting new information on this blog to make sure you keep up to date with any developments. Most of all we really hope this becomes a supportive and informative chat which helps people discuss current issues and topics in what is an increasingly complex field.

Our chat starts on the 5th May at 8pm GMT +1and Carol has already posted on the topic of Assisted Dying. My blog today has highlighted the questions that will lead us through the topic.

Why I support assisted dying

Unless we are particularly unfortunate, or live under some form of oppressive regime, everything we do in our lives is more or less under our own control. What we eat, what we wear, where we live who we sleep with/marry/secretly lust for - it's all up to us. Until it seems you come to leave this life, when that happens the decisions about how and where you die can be taken out of your hands  by family or healthcare professionals with little or no regard to your own preferences. I like being in control of my own life and the thought that I will not be in control of the end of it fills me with horror, and that is why I am a supporter of assisted dying.  The Dignity in Dying website defines an assisted death as one where a doctor prescribes a life-ending dose of medication to a mentally competent, terminally ill adult at their request, and the patient then chooses to administer the medication themselves. Assisted dying is different to euthanasia and assisted suicide. Euthanasia is a term often used to describe life ending medication being administered by a third party. Assisted suicide refers to providing assistance to die to someone who is not dying. When it comes to it, I would prefer to chose how and when I die. This is not about doubts about standards of palliative care, not about concerns about adequate pain management and not because I have my doubts about the quality of end of life care in the UK - it is all about ending my life the way I've lived it....on my own terms

I appreciate that there are some people who hold equally strong beliefs, religious, moral or otherwise about the sanctity of life and I respect their right to hold those views. What I cannot understand is why such people are not willing to afford a similar level of respect to me