The benefits of including an Advance Care Directive in your end-of-life planning.

We often forget to include our health care in our legacy plans. Living in the age of a global pandemic means that the urgency for sorting our health care, amidst our life information is imperative. Advance Care Planning is the process of planning for your current and future health care, when you are well, so that the decisions that you want to make for you, serve you when you are ill.

As mentioned above, the Advance Care Plan is the process of planning for your current and future healthcare based on the values, beliefs and preferences you have about how you want your medical needs dealt with. It involves speaking with your loved ones, trusted advisors and medical professionals to advise them of the decisions that you want to make, when you are unable to do so yourself.

Your Advance Care Plan should involve the following:

• Speaking to your loved ones and trusted advisors. It is important to speak with those most important to you about your personal beliefs and values regarding your health care. This is a very personal conversation that requires speaking to those you trust and whom you can rely on to make decisions on your behalf as you would.
• Formalise it through an Advance Care Directive. This is a formal document which appoints a substitute medical decision-maker whom you have spoken with, and who has agreed to make decisions on your behalf. This document formalises your Advance Care Plan, and is sometimes referred to as a living Will.
• Upload your Advance Care Plan to My Health Record, a government directory created to store and access all your medical needs. Storing your Advance Care Plan here, will ensure that your wishes are available to Doctors who may be treating you. You can also store the names of the people with whom you have shared your Advance Care Plan with.

Next Steps:

If you have not already, now is a great time to talk about your Advance Care Plan with those who are most important to you. Once you have done this, the LifeReady Digital Vault can securely store this information as part of your life management and end-of-life management via the My Legacy feature.

Please note: The Advance Care Plan also includes an Advance Care Directive which specifically nominates who your Medical Decision Maker will be. This person can be then be added as a Trusted Party in your LifeReady Digital Vault and have secure and easy access to this directive for when the situation arises.