This appeared last week:
Advance care directives frequently written by someone other than the patient
About 18% have been completed by someone else, survey shows
27th December 2019
Nearly one-fifth of advance care directives (ACD) for end-of-life care are completed by someone other than the patient, putting their legal validity in doubt, a new survey has revealed.
Last year, researchers examined the health records held at 15 GP clinics, 27 hospitals and 58 aged care facilities.
Among the 4200 patients aged over 65, they found 1100 had a written advance care directive.
In most cases, the directives can only be treated as legal documents when written and signed by the individual when they have decision-making capacity.
But the researchers from Advance Care Planning Australia said they found 18% of the directives had been completed by someone else, such as a family member or a carer.
This figure rose to 30% when it came to the 900 directives of patients in residential aged care.
And of these, more than two-thirds included instructions for withholding life-prolonging treatment such as tube feeding or intravenous antibiotics.
The Advance Care Planning Australia report, which claims to offer the “most comprehensive” data on the implementation of advance care planning in Australia, found only one-quarter of directives completed by another person acknowledged discussion with the individual concerned, yet 77% still specified treatment instructions.
The most common instruction was for “symptom management and comfort” (68%), a request for “some life-prolonging treatment” (16%) and “all life-prolonging treatment” (9%).
“The prevalence of advance care directive documentation completed by someone else, rather than a competent person as per legislation, may be affecting legal and clinical validity and end-of-life care,” said Linda Nolte, program director of Advance Care Planning Australia.
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More information:
Here is the link to the full article.
Just as this appeared this tasteless add appeared.
Advance Care Planning and My Health Record Community Workshop
Are you good to go?
Thursday 6 February 2020
10:00 AM - 2:00 PM
You are invited to a FREE interactive community workshop on advance care planning and My Health Record.
Here is the link:
I suppose some media person thought the line was funny? Insulting and juvenile more is like it to me!
What matters with ACDs is the process put around their creation and not the use of the #myHealthRecord to store it. Be very clear on that!
David.
HNY David. The slogan attached to the event you post is awkward at best. The figures around ACD in general are concern for alarm. Given large sums of money and resources are poured into ‘solutions’ to reduce ‘error’ and improve ‘communicated intent’ and not to mention the edge case arguments for axing the fax. These ACD numbers are taking us in the opposite direction. Another example of many of today’s issues are a direct result of poor government policy and inability to even implement bad policy correctly.
ReplyDeleteCompare Australia's toy ACD with the UK's NHS capability.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.coordinatemycare.co.uk/