Advance care planning is a means for patients to record their end-of-life values and preferences, including their wishes regarding future treatments (or avoidance of them)
Advance care planning involves a number of processes
- → informing the patient
- → eliciting preferences
- → identifying a surrogate decision maker to act if the patient is no longer able to make decisions about their own care
- → it involves discussions with family members, or at least with the person who is to be the surrogate decision maker
The principle of advance care planning is not new
- → it is common for patients aware of approaching death to discuss with their carers how they wish to be treated
- → however, these wishes have not always been respected, especially
- ☛ if the patient is urgently taken to hospital
- ☛ if there is disagreement amongst family members about what is appropriate treatment
The "Respecting Choices" program developed in Wisconsin is an example of advance care planning
- → employs trained personnel to facilitate the discussions and record the outcomes, which are in writing and signed, and kept in the front of the patient’s file
- → the surrogate decision maker is involved in the discussions so that they have explicit knowledge of the patient’s wishes; otherwise they may feel burdened by the responsibility
- → there is less conflict between patients and their families if advance care planning has been discussed
Source:
The IAHPC Manual of Palliative Care 3rd Edition
https://hospicecare.com/what-we-do/publications/manual-of-palliative-care/
