Michael Ashby COSA 2015 ASM

Michael Ashby

Michael Ashby is Director of Palliative Care, and Clinical Director, Complex, Chronic and Community (CCC) Group, Tasmania Health Service (THS)-Southern Region and Royal Hobart Hospital. He holds a conjoint position as Professor of Palliative Care, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tasmania, and teaches bioethics, palliative care and grief and loss in the MBBS course. He chairs the Clinical Ethics Committee of THS (S). He graduated from St Bartholomew's Hospital, London University in 1978, and trained in medicine and radiation oncology in the UK, France and Australia. He has held clinical, academic and managerial positions since 1989 in Adelaide and Melbourne prior to moving to Hobart in 2007. He is a Past President of the Australia and New Zealand Society for Palliative Medicine (ANZSPM) and a past Chairman of the Chapter of Palliative Medicine at the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. In 2013 he was named as a member of the Tasmanian Lead Clinicians Group, was admitted as a member of the International Working Group on Death Dying and Bereavement (IWG), and elected Vice-President of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement (ACGB). He sat on the Governing Council of THO South 2014-5. He has research interests in law, ethics and the humanities as they apply to care and decision-making at the end of life, advance care planning, and pain and symptom management. During his time as Leader of the Palliative Care Clinical Network he developed a health promotion project entitled “Health Dying’, a broad-based approach to dealing with end of life issues engaging the health professions and the wider community. This included the replacement of ‘NFR’ forms by ‘Goals of Care’, a framework for decision-making and documentation of limitation of medical treatment, especially as death approaches. He is Consultant Editor to the Journal of Bioethical Enquiry, an editor of the Journal of Palliative Care and Mortality, and a reviewer for a number of international journals.