10 things you need to know about advance care planning… 1. Hear Helen Mason’s introduction to advance care planning and the value it adds to patient care. Click here to view. 2. Bay of Plenty’s Future Care Planning Advisory Group has made the difficult decision to promote use of the national advance care planning template (click here). Ellen Fisher, Future Care Planning Implementation Manager, explains that a number of things finally swung the decision to support use of My Advance Care Plan. “First was the quality of the information collected in the ACP template; second was the information and support for people that sits behind My Advance Care Plan (click here); then there’s the cost of offering two templates; and the increasing availability of online advance care planning templates, all of which are based on the ACP template. The final factor was if a whānau with a future care plan presents to an emergency department outside the Bay of Plenty, it’s unlikely the doctor will be familiar with the format and know where to look for the information they need in an emergency.” In six months the Future Care Planning Advisory Group will review the impact of moving to the advance care plan template alone. If any of your patients have submitted a Future Care Plan, it will continue to be available to clinical staff at BOPDHB. 3. My Future Care Plan will no longer be available from the BOPDHB website or Bay Navigator. Copies of the My Advance Care Plan template are available from Ellen by phoning 027 550 7268 or emailing ellen.fisher@bopdhb.govt.nz. The ACP template can be printed from here as well as access to the online PDF. 4. Hauraki Primary Health Organisation in Waikato is beta testing a dynamic version of an online ACP template in the MedTech patient portal, Manage My Health. Once testing is complete, the online advance care planning tool will be available to patients with access to Manage My Health. 5. When patients share their advance care plan (ACP) with you, please share it with Tauranga and Whakatane Hospitals - Cut the completed ACP along the staple line - Scan as one double-sided PDF and save to your patient management system - Share the scanned ACP by e-referral to Health Records Whakatane or Tauranga (see the screen shots here – go to ‘Sharing FCP with secondary care’) - Re-staple the completed ACP and return it to the patient
August 2018 1
6. To make submitting completed ACPs easier, BOPDHB is trialing a summary sheet which you can use to record a patient’s wishes from pages 10 and 11 of their completed ACP. Scanning and submitting the double-sided summary sheet is easier than the 14-page ACP booklet but still provides the critical information required by doctors and nurses in Emergency Department. Please consider sharing the complete ACP if the patient is nearing their end-of-life and also advise patients to bring their ACP with them to health-related appointments or admissions. The Advance Care Plan Summary is available on Bay Navigator (within the Future Care Planning pathway). 7. If you want to support your team to feel more confident with advance care planning, take advantage of the FREE Level 1A one-day workshops which will be available in the Bay of Plenty in October and November. The Level 1A ACP workshop offers an introduction to the process of advance care planning, an overview of the legal framework and then an opportunity to practice your conversation skills! If you’re keen or you’d like to partner with other practices in your area, please contact Kym Richards at BOPDHB Planning and Funding at Kym.richards@bopdhb.govt.nz 8. Ryman Healthcare has joined the advance care planning programme coordinated by the ACP team at the Health Quality and Safety Commission (HQSC). In the Bay of Plenty Ryman manages the Bob Owens Retirement Village near Bethlehem. 9. Check out your app store for We Croak. It’s based on the Bhutan philosophy that says contemplating death five times daily brings happiness. One of today’s quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien was: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier place” 10. Watch this brief clip about the difference advance care planning made to the Limmer whānau in Te Aroha
August 2018 2