Advance care planning

Advance care planning is a process that enables individuals to make plans about their future health care. Advance care plans provide direction to healthcare professionals when a person is not in a position to make and/or communicate their own healthcare choices. Advance care planning is applicable to adults at all stages of life. Participation in advance care planning has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety for patients and their families, and lead to improvements in end of life care. Advance care planning is a process that enables individuals to make plans about their future health care. Advance care plans provide direction to healthcare professionals when a person is not in a position to make and/or communicate their own healthcare choices. Advance care planning is applicable to adults at all stages of life. Participation in advance care planning has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety for patients and their families, and lead to improvements in end of life care. The main components of advance care planning include the nomination of a substitute decision maker, and the completion of an advance care directive. Advance care planning is applicable to all adults in all stages of life. Advance care planning aims to allow people to live well, and when death approaches, die in accordance with their personal values. Advance care planning is only applicable when the individual cannot make and/or communicate decisions about what they want in relation to their healthcare. If advance care planning has occurred, patients who have lost capacity or the ability to communicate or both, are able to continue to have a say in their medical care. This has been shown to improve end of life care, and provide improved outcomes for both patients and their surviving relatives. While applicable to all stages of life, it is particularly applicable to end-of-life care decision making, since approximately 1 in 4 people lose decision making capacity when approaching the end of their life. Federal and state legislation in the US, Australia, Canada and the UK supports the right of patients to refuse unwanted medical treatments. People can also express their preferences through written advance directives or by advising their appointed substitute decision maker about their wishes for when they are unable to make or communicate these decisions/wishes themselves.