Compass Advance Care Directive User Guide

Compass Advance Care Directive

Product Information

Specifications:

• Product: Advance Care Directive
• Type: Written document for medical treatment instructions
• Purpose: Provide directions for medical treatment if capacity is lost

Product Usage Instructions

Wh at is an Advance Care Directive?
An Advance Care Directive (or ACD) is a written document where you specify the medical treatment you wish to receive if you are unable to communicate your preferences due to a serious medical condition.

What’s in an Advance Care Directive?
An ACD typically includes:

• Instructions on life-saving treatment preferences
• Details about your values, life goals, and preferred outcomes
• Directions on medical conditions you find unbearable
• Consent or refusal for future medical treatments
• Information about your appointed Enduring Guardian or medical decision-maker

Why should you make an Advance Care Directive?

Creating an ACD is essential to ensure your wishes regarding medical treatment are honoured if you are unable to communicate them. It provides clarity to your family and medical staff, eliminating guesswork and potential guilt associated with making critical decisions.

FAQ

Q: When should I create an Advance Care Directive?
A: It is recommended to create an ACD before facing a life-threatening illness or injury. Documenting your preferences in advance ensures your wishes are known and respected.

Q: What should I include in my Advance Care Directive?
A: Your ACD should include instructions on life-saving treatments, details about your values and preferences, consent or refusal for future medical treatments, and information about your appointed decision-maker.

An Advance Care Directive is a written document with instructions for medical treatment you would want to receive if you lose capacity.

• We all know it’s possible that, at some stage, we might be faced with a terminal illness or a life-threatening injury. However, it’s generally something we prefer not to think about too much. As a result, we may not have wondered how our medical care decisions would be made if we did become seriously unwell. How could we be looked after in the way we’d like if we were too ill to communicate what that was?
• At an already hard and distressing time, medical decisions would be very difficult for our families and friends to make for us. But the task would be much easier if there was a way they could know for certain what we preferred or didn’t want, in the way of treatment options.
• There is a way—it’s called an Advance Care Directive

What is an Advance Care Directive

An Advance Care Directive (or ACD) is a written document in which you give directions, in advance, for what medical treatment(s) you would want to receive if you become unable to make or communicate those directions yourself.
The ACD is intended to be followed if you acquired a serious medical condition that requires life-prolonging treatment and prevents you from giving medical instructions. These conditions could include things like:

• severe and irreversible brain damage
• a terminal illness with no known cure or chance of recovery
• a severe illness or injury with little to no likelihood of recovery.

At such a time, your family and treating doctors can refer to the ACD as a record of your instructions about whether to continue or stop medical treatment

What’s in an Advance Care Directive

Normally, the ACD will contain instructions about whether to stop certain life-saving medical treatments if there was no reasonable expectation that you will recover. It can also include:

• details of what is important to you, such as your values, life goals and preferred outcomes,
• directions about medical conditions that you would find unbearable,
• instructions about future medical treatment you consent to or refuse,
• details of your appointed Enduring Guardian, medical decision-maker or next of kin
• any particular moral, religious or other reasons for your decisions

The length and content of the ACD will depend on the template that you use. At the end of this article, you’ll find links to the different templates for the various Australian states and territories.

Why should you make an Advance Care Directive?

• Thanks to medical science, people can now expect to live longer than previous generations did. However, this increased life expectancy doesn’t guarantee a correspondingly increased—or even maintained— quality of life. So some people might prefer not to receive life-prolonging medical treatment if they were faced with the prospect of spending their remaining time bedridden, in pain, affected by advanced dementia or suffering a terminal illness.
• Sometimes these conditions can rob a person of the ability to make or communicate their own medical decisions. That’s why it’s so important to record your decisions and preferences in advance by making an ACD.
• You don’t have to wait until you have a life-threatening illness or injury to make an ACD. If you have an opinion about or have already decided, what medical treatment(s) you would not want to receive and when you would not want to receive it, you should document these wishes. And the appropriate way to do so is an ACD.
• Your ACD will give certainty to your family and medical staff and take any guesswork out of choosing medical care for you because it will provide a clear record of your directions and wishes that they can refer to. This can alleviate feelings of responsibility or guilt your guardian or next of kin might have over having to make decisions about ending life support.
• An ACD can also help to avoid potentially stressful and expensive court proceedings. Let’s look at what could happen if a patient has expressed their wishes about life-sustaining medical treatment but hasn’t recorded them in an ACD.
• Their treating doctors may be reluctant, or refuse, to stop treatment in case they face criminal or medical practice disciplinary action for acting without the patient’s written directions.
• A relevant person (for example, a close family member) can apply to the court to authorise the stopping of treatment. The court may agree, depending on the evidence before it, but there’s no guarantee it will, and the whole process can be time-consuming and costly.

This is why someone who has communicated any directions for the medical treatment they would like to receive if they faced a life-threatening illness or injury should formalise those directions in a valid ACD.

How do you make an Advance Care Directive?

• The laws and regulations relating to ACDs differ between the states and territories. Even the terminology used is not the same Australia-wide. Each state and territory has its own guides, forms and information.
• Even though a valid ACD made in one state or territory will apply in other places within Australia, it’s best to make an ACD in your permanent home state.
• Generally, your ACD must be dated and signed before an eligible witness. You should preferably complete and sign your ACD with a solicitor or doctor, or both. This will provide evidence if needed, that you understood the nature and effect of the ACD when you signed it and received advice before signing.
• “The ACD usually requires supporting documentation such as a valid appointment of a guardian or a medical decision-maker appointment. To find out the requirements in your state or territory you can access the Create Your Plan page on the Advance Care Planning Australia website.”

Where can you find the documents?

National
Advance Care Planning Australia is a national program that provides resources to help Australians understand advance care planning and to create their plan.
More Information

In the ACT

The relevant documents are an Advance Care Plan Statement of Choices and a Health Direction. Information and forms are available from Advance Care Planning Australia.
More Information

In New South Wales
NSW Health provides an information booklet and Advance Care Directive form.
More Information

In Queensland
The document is called an Advance Health Directive, and a form to make one is available from the Queensland Government.
More Information

In South Australia
The state government has an Advance Care Directive form you can complete online, as well as information for completing the form.
More Information

In Tasmania
Information and an Advance Care Directive form is available from Advance Care Planning Australia. More Information

In Victoria
The Department of Health provides the Advance Care Directive form along with instructions for completing it.
More Information

In Western Australia
The Department of Health provides information and a form for making an Advance Health Directive. More Information

To learn more visit Compass.info

References

• Help tackling elder abuse, starts here. – Compass

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