Advance Care Planning

What is Advance Care Planning?

Advance Care Planning gives everyone, including you, a chance to think about what’s important. It helps you to understand what the future might hold and to say what health care you would, or would not, want.

Advance Care Planning helps you, the important people in your life and your health care team plan for your end-of-life care.  This makes it much easier for everyone to know what you want – especially if there comes a time that you can no longer speak for yourself.

Advance Care Planning can be done a step at a time at your own pace.

The important steps are thinking and talking about your wishes, writing them down or recording them and sharing them.

There are guides and an online Advance Care Planning tool you can use to record your wishes. They are as follows:

• My Advance Care Plan and Guide where you can download or print an ACP template so you can fill it in 
  
  
• The He Waka Kakarauri Māori model which can be used to start ACP conversations and record your wishes. 
   
• The recommended method is to use the online Whanau Tahi ACP portal to create your Advance Care Plan.  This is then immediately available to a range of health providers you give access to, including your GP practice and the hospital. Please email acp@northlanddhb.org.nz to be set up to use this. Once you are setup you will receive an email with instructions on how to access this tool. 
• You can access an overview of the Whānau Tahi Portal here

How to get started on your Advance Care Plan