National Advance Care Planning Week begins soon

The AMA welcomes this year’s National Advance Care Planning Week, 20–26 March. Run by Advance Care Planning Australia, this important initiative encourages people to start conversations with loved ones to identify ‘what matters most’ to them in relation to the care they would want, as well as the care they would not want, at the end of life and to identify a substitute decision-maker should they lose decision-making capacity in the future. In addition to supporting patients, advance care planning alleviates the burden of decision-making placed on families and reduces unwanted interventions and non-beneficial transfers to acute care.

General practitioners have a particularly important role to play in initiating advance care planning discussions with patients of any age, supporting those patients to prepare, and review and update as appropriate, their advance care planning documents (such as advance care directives) and encouraging patients to make their plans known to others and share their plans with family members, substitute decision-makers and other relevant health care practitioners as well as their aged care facility, where relevant.

Through a range of online courses, workshops, webinars and information sessions, ACPA provides advice and support, training, education and guidance for health care professionals as well as research in relation to advance care planning. Resources can be accessed through the ACPA website at advancecareplanning.org.au. For relevant AMA policy, refer to the AMA Position Statement on End of Life Care and Advance Care Planning 2014