Understanding National Advance Care Planning Week: A Vital Step Towards Informed Healthcare Decision-Making

We’re celebrating National Advance Care Planning Week (18-24 March), a time dedicated to fostering informed healthcare decision-making and advocating for proactive health planning.

What is Advance Care Planning?

Advance Care Planning (ACP) is a collaborative process aimed at preparing individuals for their future healthcare needs. It is a voluntary and ongoing dialogue that ensures one’s healthcare preferences and values are documented and respected. Through ACP, individuals can articulate their treatment preferences, end-of-life care wishes, and medical directives.

The Benefits of Advance Care Planning

The advantages of engaging in Advance Care Planning are multifaceted:

  • Consistent Care Delivery: ACP helps guarantee that individuals receive care that aligns with their wishes and values, even if they are unable to communicate their preferences in the future.
  • Enhanced End-of-Life Care: By outlining preferences in advance, individuals can receive more personalised and satisfactory end-of-life care.
  • Improved Communication: Advance Care Planning encourages open and honest communication between individuals, their families, and healthcare professionals, fostering mutual understanding and respect.
  • Reduced Moral Distress: Families and caregivers experience less moral distress when they are aware of their loved one’s healthcare preferences, making difficult decisions more manageable.
  • Prevention of Unwanted Treatments: ACP may help prevent unnecessary or unwanted medical interventions and treatments, ensuring that care remains focused on the individual’s goals and quality of life.

Empowering Individuals Through Information

At Reliant, we recognise the importance of Advance Care Planning in promoting individual autonomy and quality healthcare. We are committed to providing resources, guidance, and support to help individuals and families navigate the ACP process.

For more information on Advance Care Planning and how you can get started, please reach out to our compassionate team of healthcare professionals, and find information and conversation starters on the Advance Care Planning Australia website.

Let’s use National Advance Care Planning Week as an opportunity to prioritise our health and wellbeing, and to take proactive steps towards shaping our healthcare futures.

Pride in Health + Wellbeing

Since day one, our mission at Reliant Healthcare has been to provide the highest standard in human care, not just health care. We are serious about enabling people to really live their best and healthiest lives in the setting of their choosing.

It’s certainly an ambitious goal, but we’re determined.

A task this monumental can only be achieved by working together, and that’s why we are so extremely proud to be a foundation member of Pride in Health + Wellbeing, a program which aims to raise the bar across the board when it comes to LGBTI inclusive health service provision. This is an important foundation which harnesses a group of passionate and empathetic businesses (and people, after all, that’s what we are made of!) focussed on redefining wellness and celebrating diversity in all its glorious forms.

We are all agents for change. At Reliant Healthcare we’re deeply committed to not just health, but overall happiness and believe that diversity, equality and inclusiveness are core pillars of our society. We believe in doing whatever we can, in whatever capacity we can, especially during such a challenging time for the LGBTI community.

Our LGBTI communities and individuals are extremely diverse and face a number of shared and distinct health and social inclusion issues. We also know that when LGBTI individuals require access to health and wellbeing services, they often hit more roadblocks, refrain from accessing critical services, and as a result, experience poorer health and wellbeing outcomes than their non-LGBTI peers. We want to change this.

Working with other industry leaders including Medibank, Lifeline and Flourish we are committed to improving the health and wellbeing of Australian LGBTI communities.

With that in mind, we would also like to share this guide, compiled by ACON, to assist other health services to support LGBTI clients during the protracted debate surrounding marriage equality.