Let’s talk about Advanced Planning

Advance care planning is the process of thinking and talking about what care and medical treatments you would want to receive before you might need them.

It involves considering what options and choices are available to you. This can be done by talking about your choices with your doctor, carers and family before there are changes in your health, or if you were to become unable to discuss these things.

Advance care planning involves creating a guide for your doctor, carers and family in case they need to make medical decisions on your behalf. By doing this, they will know what treatments would be acceptable to you and those which could be burdensome to you as an individual.

An Advanced Care Plan can record such things as your wishes, choices and preferences about future medical care and treatments, as well as document your values, beliefs, goals of medical treatment and, specify your end of life care choices and preferences.

There are many benefits to Advance Care Planning.

• It is a way of opening up discussion about what matters to you, what might happen in the future as you age and what you might like to happen at the end of life.
• It can be a way of reducing stressful decision making for those who might be asked to be your substitute decision maker.
• It raises the opportunity to identify your ‘person responsible’ who will be your substitute decision maker. You may decide to legally appoint an ‘Enduring Guardian’ who has the legal rights to make health and lifestyle decisions on your behalf if you are not able to.
• Should you have a disease, discussions can be had about your disease trajectory and what you might expect in the future.
• As well as the opportunity to document both health care and medical treatment choices, to guide others in making substitute decisions on your behalf.

An Advanced Care Plan can be amended at any time, or as your condition changes. You may also wish to have an Advanced Care Directive document recorded which is ONLY used if you are unable to make medical decisions yourself.

Want to know more?

Come along and find out about the importance of Advance Care Planning at our upcoming sessions. During these sessions we discuss health care preferences with your loved ones, we also outline what information, resources and support Anglican Care can provide you. Our Guest Speakers will be Anglican Care’s Nurse Practitioners. Light refreshments will be provided.

We are hosting three sessions …

TORONTO Session
10am-11.30am Tuesday, 24th March 2020
Training Room, Kilpatrick Court 153/152 Brighton Ave, Toronto

TAREE Session
10am-11.30am Wednesday, 25th March 2020
Conference Room, Storm Village 109 Cowper St, Taree

BULAHDELAH Session
10am-11.30am Thursday, 26th March 2020
27-31 Crawford St, Bulahdelah NSW 2423

No need to RSVP, just turn up. If you have any queries, please call our friendly Customer Support Team on 1800 733 553.

This function is being held as part of National Advance Care Planning Week.