Advance Care Planning: A Public Right and Professional Responsibility

Advance Care Planning is an integral part of patient care, not a nice to have extra. Essentially, Advance Care Planning is about What Matters Most to a person and delivering care in line with their wishes, values and belief. There are plenty of excellent resources available to translate the rather nebulous concept of wishes, values and beliefs into practical conversations and actions. I have written about some of these in an earlier blog.

Much of the work I do advocates for improved professional understanding and public awareness; I aim to normalise Advance Care Planning and work towards transforming Difficult Conversations into Important Conversations. I follow with great respect the work of international colleagues and in this blog would like to highlight Advance Care Planning in Canada, the resources available and imminent ACP Day 2022 and the work of the Waiting Room Revolution team.

Advance Care Planning in Canada

Advance Care Planning in Canada, initiated by the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association in 2008, focuses on a Pan-Canadian Advance Care Planning approach providing excellent resource and reference for health and care professional and individuals and families.

The section for health and care professionals provides toolkits, the approaches needed in different Canadian territories and a Pan-Canadian framework.

For individuals and families there is a wealth of resource including FAQs and an ACP podcast. The resource and tools section provides information for everyone. My Speak UP Plan shows an interactive map which allows users to download and print a Speak Up workbook relevant to their territory.

A National ACP Day

Each year a national ACP Day is held in Canada, this year it will be on April 16th. The 2022 strap line is Life Happens….be ready. Resource material includes a how well do you know me game and a video talking about normalising Advance Care Planning. Whilst some material is Canadian specific (for example Substitute Decision Maker instead of Power of Attorney), the principles are transferable.

I will be following the day with interest, join the conversation with the ACP Day #LifeHappens tag.

The Waiting Room Revolution

For fabulous resource on being “in the know” rather than “in the dark” about talking and planning ahead the Waiting Room Revolution provide seven keys to unlocking a better illness experience. In season 1 the founders, Sammy and Hsien, present ten podcasts focusing on how to walk two roads when living with a serious illness. I found every episode to be so valuable, rich with wisdom and thought; what a difference it would make if this could be widely heard by healthcare professionals and the public in England too. There are now four seasons of work and you can listen to them all here.

Advance Care Planning in England

In England the Universal Principles for Advance Care Planning were recently launched by NHSEI. The principles set out a universal personalised approach to Advance Care Planning and aim to support a consistent approach to “what good looks like” in Advance Care Planning in England. The work is in response to recommendations in the CQC report Protect, respect, connect - decisions about living and dying well during COVID-19, one of which called for a more consistent approach to Advance Care Planning.

The guide summarises what Advance Care Planning is and has useful links to resources for the public and professionals. We don’t have a single point of access or repository in England for Advance Care Planning information, but we do have a wealth of resource for Advance Care Planning – I have documented some of this in a here and feel another blog needed to do justice to all that is available.

Next steps

Throughout this blog I have included links to some great Advance Care Planning resource highlighting work from our Canadian colleagues and including more local resource. Advance Care Planning is important to us all, terminology may differ but principles are universal. I look forward to supporting 2022 Canadian ACP events and to learning from others passionate about supporting Advance Care Planning.