Deceased
Ms [Redacted] Williams
Demographics
female
Coroner
Coroner Temby
Date of death
2023-04-27
Finding date
2026-03-10
Cause of death
sodium nitrite poisoning
AI-generated summary
A 70-year-old school teacher and community advocate with motor neuron disease (MND) died by sodium nitrite ingestion on 27 April 2023. She had explicitly expressed wishes to end her life and explored available options. Palliative care practitioners offered palliative sedation therapy (PST) at home, but conflicting medical advice about duration (2 weeks vs a few days) and eventual inability to provide home-based PST due to resource constraints left Ms Williams dissatisfied. She had sought voluntary assisted dying (VAD), which was unavailable in the ACT at that time. The coroner found no matters of public safety and no preventable errors. The case highlighted gaps in end-of-life options for terminally ill patients without access to VAD, leading to the ACT subsequently implementing a VAD scheme in November 2025. No clinical negligence was identified.
AI-generated summary and tagging — may contain inaccuracies; refer to original finding for legal purposes. Report an inaccuracy.
Specialties
Drugs involved
Clinical conditions
Procedures
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A 68-year-old woman with Motor Neuron Disease died from asphyxia on 15 March 2019. She had been diagnosed with MND in 2016 and experienced progressive disability requiring wheelchair use and assistance with activities of…
88y · Male·left frontal lobe haemorrhage due to a fall
Mr Edward Davis, an 88-year-old man with epilepsy, stroke, dementia and on anticoagulation therapy, fell onto a Stand-Up Lifter positioned directly in front of him while waiting for a second staff member to operate it. H…
Female·bilateral acute bronchopneumonia
Ivy Pearl Ghobrial died from bilateral acute bronchopneumonia at a nursing home in September 2001, following a hypoxic brain injury sustained from a hanging attempt in March 2000. The coroner found the death resulted ine…
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