When Claudia Matthews, the Advance Care Planning facilitator at Taranaki District Health Board, was invited to speak to the Positive Ageing Forum earlier this month, she says she was delighted to have the opportunity to do so.
"It is always a pleasure being invited to present in rural towns, it brings me back to my farm upbringing," she says. Advance Care Planning is an important issue, says Claudia, and with this in mind the Stratford Press invited her to submit an article on the topic.
I found it an all too common situation where patients lay incapacitated in Intensive Care, unable to voice their treatment preferences ...
Advance care planning gives everyone a chance to say what is important to them. It helps people understand what the future might hold and to say what treatment they would and would not want.
It helps people, their families/whanau and their healthcare teams plan for future and end of life care. This makes it much easier for families/whanau and healthcare providers to know what the person would want - particularly if they can no longer speak for themselves.