5 Ways To Make Your Dog’s Last Days Their Best Days – DogTime

By Maggie Clancy

Grieving over the loss of a pet is traumatic. But sometimes, it can be even harder when we know that our dogs don’t have much time left. Anticipatory grief is real, and it’s a completely normal emotion to feel.

Dogs are very intuitive, and your grief may be contagious to your ailing pet. Perhaps instead of spending your remaining time with your canine companion in a state of grieving and sadness, you can make the rest of your dog’s life as comfortable and wonderful as possible.

Here are some tips on how to make your dog’s last days the best that they possibly can be.

Create A Bucket List

Dog parent Riina Cooke made the decision to make a bucket list for her terminally ill Boxer, and it helped her with the grieving process tremendously. From a cheeseburger to a pedicure, she filled her dog’s remaining time with fun and happiness.

What makes your dog ecstatic? Is it taking luxurious car rides? Hanging out with some of their favorite friends?

Create a list of what your dog loves to do best, and cross off as many as you can as long as your dog’s health and safety permits.

There’s nothing better than seeing your pup at their happiest, and there’s no better way to remember them than in that state, as well.

Go All Out With The Food

If your dog’s vet agrees that certain people foods are okay for your dog to ingest, give your pup the tastiest, most decadent food possible.

When my childhood dog, a nine-year-old Cocker Spaniel, was suffering from a myriad of ailments, we gave her steamed rice and steak every night for dinner. Some nights, her dinner was fancier than what the humans of the household were eating.

Ask your vet which foods are appropriate, and start making Fido gourmet meals.

Indulge In All Forms Of Pampering

Go buck wild with any and all forms of pampering, especially anything that will relax and soothe your dog.

Have a dog masseuse come to your house. Go to a dog bakery and get them the most outrageous dog cake you can find.

You can even go a little less traditional route and do things like take your dog to a pet communicator or psychic to hear what they’re really feeling. You may not be a believer, but it will probably be a fun experience and a fond memory.

Get Educated On Pain Management

This may not be the most fun part of the list, but it’s crucial. If your dog is suffering, it may not always be apparent that he or she is in pain. Educate yourself on the signs of pain in dogs.

If your dog hits a point of extreme pain or a point where you cannot take care of your pup yourself, it may be time to consider dog hospice care. Much like human hospice care, dog hospice care is from the comfort of your own home.

You can work with your vet on things like administering medications and deciding if and when it’s the right time for euthanasia.

Allow Your Friends And Family To Help You

In order for you to be in the right state of mind for when your dog is nearing the end of their life, you should have a solid support group. Talk to friends who know your dog well, family, and a veterinarian you can trust.

Many animal hospitals also offer support groups. By having this ring of support for yourself, you will be able to effectively and lovingly support your pooch through this painful time.

Letting go of a dog is never easy, but you can make it as positive of an experience as possible for both you and your dog.

If you’ve gone through the grieving process of a dog passing away, what did you do to make your dog’s last days their best? Do any fond memories bring you comfort? Let us know in the comments below!

Complete Article HERE!

Sometimes a ‘Good Death’ Is the Best a Doctor Can Offer

Despite everything we do, we have lost so many battles with Covid-19

By Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa

There has been so much clinician distress with the Covid-19 pandemic. So many physicians, nurses, and health care professionals have suffered physical, emotional, and moral difficulty taking care of severely sick patients. Some have even committed suicide.

As an ICU physician, I feel this firsthand and believe the reason for the anguish is that we, as critical care doctors and nurses and health professionals, are used to making a difference in the lives of our critically ill patients. Yes, we do lose some patients despite all that we do. But, for the most part, the majority of the patients we see and care for in the ICU get better and survive their critical illness.

Covid-19 has upended all of that.

Before Covid, I would not think twice about placing someone on a ventilator. It is a life-saving measure. With Covid, however, many patients who go on ventilators never come off. This is very distressing.

It is just so hard to try and try and try — spending many waking and sleeping hours — to help these patients pull through, only to have them die on you. Many times, the deaths are expected. Sometimes they are not, and those deaths are the most difficult to bear.

We are used to seeing death in the ICU. It is inevitable that some patients, despite all that we do, are going to die. With Covid, however, it is different. So many have died, and what makes it so hard is that these people are dying alone. Their families are only left to watch them die, if they so choose, on FaceTime or Skype. I’ve lost a daughter to critical illness. I cannot imagine the horror of not being able to be there at her side.

I was speaking to a fellow ICU doctor, and he told me that it seems all he is doing in the ICU is ensuring a “good death” for his patients, and this has deeply bothered him. He is not used to this amount of death. None of us are. It is very, very hard.

Is there any such thing as a “good death”?< It seems oxymoronic that the words “good” and “death” can be juxtaposed. As doctors, our whole existence is to prevent our patients from dying. So, in one sense, there is no such thing as a “good death.” To be sure, I have seen plenty of “bad deaths” in the ICU. Of course, those include patients whose death was unexpected. At the same time, there are patients who we know (despite everything we do) will not survive. In those cases, we do our best to make sure the patient does not suffer. If a patient dies while suffering pain or distress, or they get care that is not consistent with their values and wishes, then — to me, at least — this constitutes a “bad death.” But, indeed, there can be a “good death.”

None of us knows when or where we are going to die… If, however, we can die with comfort, without pain, without distress, and with complete dignity, then that is sometimes the best outcome.

As a doctor, especially an ICU doctor, it is awesome to see our patients do well and survive critical illness. It gives me an indescribable feeling of warmth and joy, and it is the fuel that keeps me going for a very long time. This joy has only been amplified during the Covid crisis. Watching one of our patients — who was very sick and I thought for sure going to die — walk out of the hospital on his own made me absolutely ecstatic.

Sadly, however, that experience has been fleeting with Covid, which has been so disheartening. Yet, even in death, there is an opportunity to do good. Even in death, we can do all that we can to ensure our patients die in peace, without pain, without suffering, and with the dignity they deserverecent study found that approximately 25% of patients experienced at least one significant pain episode at some point in the last day of life. More than 40% of patients experienced delirium. Delirium is an altered state of consciousness, and as ICU doctors, we work very hard to minimize this experience in our patients. In more than 22% of ICUs in America, there were high rates of invasive therapies at the time of death. Almost 13% of patients were receiving CPR at the time of their death, and more than 35% of patients died on a ventilator.

If getting CPR or being on a ventilator will only prolong suffering, or if either is not consistent with a patient’s wishes or values, then I — as their physician — must do everything I can to ensure this does not happen.

When I speak to families on the phone, trying to comfort them in the face of the death of their loved one, I promise this one thing: “I promise you that your loved one will not suffer. I promise you that I will make sure they are not in pain or in distress.” It doesn’t make the death of their loved one any easier, I know, but it is the absolute least I can do to make a horrible situation better.

None of us knows when or where we are going to die. Many (if not most) of us do not know what will cause our death. Those factors are beyond our control. If, however, we can die with comfort, without pain, without distress, and with complete dignity, then that is sometimes the best outcome. That is a “good death.”

And if it is inevitable that a patient will die, and I can help that patient die a “good death,” then that is my job. And in that duty, there is some good, some light, in the overwhelming darkness of this pandemic.

Complete Article HERE!

I’m an oncologist with terminal cancer, and I support medical aid in dying.

Here’s why.

As my cancers progress, I want to be in charge. I want the legal option to die, if need be, before it is too late to consent to my own death.

By Dr. Tom R. Fitch

Remarkable advances in medical care are helping us live longer. But that means there also are an increasing number of people living with advancing serious illness.

The vast majority understand they are living with a terminal condition, yet they and their families are unprepared for the final stages of life. Relatively few have had discussions with their physicians about their prognosis and end-of-life care options. Their wishes and goals are not discussed, and no meaningful informed consent regarding further disease-directed treatments is provided.

“Let’s try this,” becomes the default recommendation, and patients are commonly led down a path of relentless disease-directed therapies of limited to no benefit. Tragically, more treatment too often results in more suffering and shortened survival.

With the expert end-of-life care currently available, dying and death can be meaningful and peaceful for many. But to believe all deaths are “natural” – peaceful and without suffering – is just wrong.

I cared for patients with cancer for more than 30 years and increasingly provided palliative and hospice care over the final 17 years of my career. I saw agonizing deaths despite my best efforts, and it was not rare for patients to ask me how I might help accelerate their dying. That, however, was not an option in either Minnesota or Arizona where I practiced.

Patients must understand their options

Now, I too am faced with terminal illness. I have multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and despite aggressive care, I have not achieved remission. My cancers are incurable.

I contemplate dying and my death and those thoughts include consideration of medical aid in dying. I do not know if I would ever self-administer a lethal dose of medications, but I pray that the option is available for me.

I do know that we must help patients and families overcome the taboo of discussing their prognosis, dying and death. We need to facilitate meaningful end-of-life care conversations among patients, their families and health-care providers; promote the completion of advance directives; and encourage discussions of patients’ wishes, goals and values.

Patients and families must be informed of the many end-of-life care options available – including the expertise of palliative care and hospice providers, discussions regarding the possibility of stopping disease-directed therapies, withholding or withdrawing more advanced supportive care and/or devices, voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, and palliative sedation.

Patients near the end of their life also should have access to medical aid in dying (MAID).

What medical aid in dying laws do

I fully respect the conscience of those who oppose MAID; they are opposed for passionately held personal beliefs and values. I simply ask that they similarly respect my strongly held beliefs and values.

Guidance in the American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics understands this divide: “it encompasses the irreducible moral tension at stake for physicians with respect to participating in assisted suicide. Supporters and opponents share a fundamental commitment to values of care, compassion, respect, and dignity; they diverge in drawing different moral conclusions from those underlying values in equally good faith.”

MAID is now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia, available to more than 70 million residents. After nearly 50 years of real-word experience, there has been no evidence of the “slippery slope” or “increased societal risk” opponents routinely cite.

We have seen no indication of a heightened risk for women, the elderly, poorly educated, the disabled, minorities, minor or those with mental illness. There has been no rising incidence of casual deaths and no evidence to suggest that MAID has harmed the integrity of medicine or end-of-life care.

MAID laws clearly provide adequate safeguards and allow for the position of dissenting physicians. The laws respect their conscience and give the right to any physician not to participate.

This is patient-centered care

Those of us who support MAID are asking for the same – respect for our conscience and considered judgment. We do not believe we are doing harm. We are caring for a competent adult who has a terminal illness with a prognosis of six months or less. We are providing patient-centered care consistent with the patient’s wishes, goals, beliefs and values – helping that patient avoid protracted, refractory and avoidable suffering.

One false narrative espoused by opponents – that “participation in MAID is suicide” – needs to be addressed. Participants do not want to die. They have a progressive terminal illness, and meaningful, prolonged survival is no longer an option.

They have full mental capacity with an understanding of their disease, its expected course and their prognosis. They have the support of their family. They feel their personhood is being destroyed by their illness, and they want their death to be meaningful and peaceful.

None of this is true for people who die by suicide.

Personally, I no longer struggle with the ethics, morality and other controversies surrounding MAID. Ethical principles and moral laws alone are just not sufficient to answer the complex questions surrounding an individual’s dying and death.

Our diverse country and our Constitution forbid us from imposing our own religious and faith beliefs on others. When we try, we are forcing others to conform to our beliefs and we are turning a blind eye from truly seeing the very real human suffering that is in front of us.

It is devastating for patients if we ignore their life stories, their family, their culture, and the impact of their disease and treatment on their life and well-being. The value of their life, as they define it, has vanished and they want to die on their own terms.

This is not a challenge to God’s divine sovereignty but a challenge to the disease itself. Patients are vowing that it will no longer be in charge.

As my cancers progress, I too want to be in charge. I want the legal option to die, if need be, before it is too late to consent to my own death. I desperately want to avoid recruitment into that borderland where I would vegetate as neither here nor there.

I ask for your unconditional trust and I ask that those opposed to MAID for themselves, respect my prayerful discernment and personal requests for end-of-life care as I believe it is consistent with my needs, beliefs and values.

Complete Article HERE!

How Dying Taught Me to Live

By Brad Dell 

His little ribs rose, then fell, then rose, then fell, then stayed still. The spark left his green, curious eyes — I swear it wasn’t a trick of the light. They were dull … dead.

I loathed myself for letting my first cat be put to sleep without me by her side. I swore I’d be there for my second when he passed less than a year later. I swore I’d look him in the eye, even if it meant nothing to him. And so I did.

The odd thing was that he wasn’t afraid. He was calm. He’d spent a good life of hunting, cuddling, and lounging. He knew his place in nature’s cycle. I didn’t understand that. Not then.

But my time came.

Sepsis destroyed me. As my soul ripped loose from my bones, I gasped to my girlfriend that I loved her but I would soon need to die. Then I pissed the bed. I realized that dying isn’t romantic like in the movies. I stank from rolling around in a soiled, sweaty bed, and my voice was hoarse from begging for an end.

While death isn’t romantic, it can be peaceful. In my time, I’ve known many who have passed — they’re either ready or they’re not. I wasn’t yet ready. I was ugly and bitter in my death, outraged by the unfairness of this world.

Somehow, I survived.

The paradox of death is that it teaches you how to live. The tragedy of death is not everyone gets a chance to apply what they’ve learned.

I woke up in an unfamiliar world. All details seemed illuminated and emotions felt overwhelmingly potent. I cried a lot more, hugged a lot more, prayed a lot more, loved a lot more.

Former priorities fell away; ambition, money, and comfort lost their gleam. Each day during recovery, I composed an obituary in my head: “Boy dies of cystic fibrosis. He had caustic humor, good grades, and a decent savings account.” I craved depth and vowed to thrive with passion and weave a legacy of compassion.

Did my old friend know I’m sorry for calling him fat in fifth grade? Did my sister know I look up to her? Did my parents know I regret every single time I lashed out at them? Did everyone know that I mostly only pretended to love, yet always yearned to learn its power?

I lay in my soiled bed and tried recalling instances in which I’d helped people out of love rather than for the potential of a self-serving debt. I sobbed at the realization that I’d lost myself long, long ago. In prayer, I begged for redemption, for help with becoming the Brad I was designed to be.

It’s been 47 months since that prayer. I’m nowhere close to perfect, but I’m far from who I was. Today, my joy comes from expressions of vulnerability, wide smiles and belly laughs, the bonds forged through struggle, the light in people’s eyes, the warmth of another body, the tears poured in prayers, the little acts of love and the big acts of love, the feet that tap along to music, the winding conversations over meals, the exhilaration of adventure, the richness of sharing nature and sunsets with strangers.

I am ready to die, when that time comes again, though I’d love to learn even more about life with a third pass. Death is liberating, driving me to be fully present and live intentionally for the things that truly matter.

Like my old cat, I know my place in nature’s cycle. Mine is to love and be loved in return. Maybe that seems sappy to those who haven’t yet died. But one day you’ll understand, too.

Complete Article HERE!

Do You Want to Die in an I.C.U.?

Pandemic Makes Question All Too Real

Cheryl Goldman of Valley Stream, N.Y., has emphysema and relies on supplemental oxygen. She told her son that if she contracted Covid-19 and needed a ventilator that she would refuse treatment.

Sobering statistics for older patients sharpen the need to draw up advanced directives for treatment and share them with their families.

By

Earlier this month, Cheryl Goldman, a retired high school teacher living on Long Island, called her son, Edo Banach, in Maryland. It seemed a routine chat until Ms. Goldman announced that if she became ill with Covid-19, she would decline a ventilator.

“I’m her health care proxy,” said Mr. Banach, who happens to be the president of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. “Her perspective was, what’s the point? In all likelihood it’s not going to help, and she’d be taking a vent away from someone else.”

At 69, Ms. Goldman has emphysema and already relies on supplemental oxygen. She told me that she’d been following the news, including the grim statistics for older adults with chronic illnesses who require ventilators during extended stays in intensive care.

In such cases, “the number who leave the hospital is low, and it’s lower for someone with health problems like me,” she said. She also feared being separated from her family during a hospitalization and wanted, instead, to remain at home with hospice care. “It’s a pragmatic decision.”

Mr. Banach, leading the response of about a thousand hospices nationwide that are facing heightened demand and bracing for worse, appreciated her forthrightness. “It’s the kind of conversation everyone should be having with their loved ones,” he said.

In the best of times, it can be tough to get Americans to discuss and document their end-of-life wishes. Depending on the study, a third to two-thirds of adults haven’t drafted advance directives, the documents that outline which medical treatments they would accept or refuse and designate a decision maker to act on their behalf if they’re incapacitated.

“People think, I’ll deal with it in the future,” Mr. Banach said. But for thousands of older adults, the future may have arrived.

To date, there’s no clear evidence that older people are more apt to contract the new coronavirus, said Dr. Douglas White, a critical care specialist and the director of the Program on Ethics and Decision Making at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

“What we do know is that older individuals are more likely to experience very severe disease if they do become infected,” he said. “The data are sobering.”

That’s partly because most older adults have chronic conditions — heart or lung disease, diabetes, high blood pressure — known to intensify the virus’s effects. And they have less physiologic reserve — “less ability to rebound from an overwhelming illness,” Dr. White explained.

When seniors and their families engage in what’s called advance-care planning, they often focus on the D.N.R. question — whether patients would want to be resuscitated after cardiac arrest.

But because Covid-19 is a respiratory disease, the more pressing question will likely be whether a hospitalized patient who’s seriously ill will accept intubation and ventilation.

That initially involves a tube inserted down the throat, connected to a ventilator that pushes air into the lungs. When a patient has spent two weeks on a vent, doctors commonly perform a tracheostomy, creating a surgical opening in the windpipe that replaces the swallowed tube.

Long before the virus erupted, among people over 66 who spent 14 days in an I.C.U. on a ventilator, 40 percent died within a year of discharge. Now, “those numbers are too rosy for Covid,” Dr. White said, citing findings from Italy and Britain, where more than half of older patients on prolonged ventilation died.

A just-published JAMA article looked at coronavirus patients admitted to Northwell Health hospitals in and around New York City. Excluding those still hospitalized after the monthlong study, the mortality rate among patients over age 65 exceeded 26 percent, and almost all patients over 65 who needed mechanical ventilation during that period died.

That data can prompt frank exchanges. “If a patient is elderly and has significant medical issues, I’ll explain that a large proportion of people who become ill with Covid-19 and need a ventilator unfortunately will not survive,” said Dr. Kosha Thakore, the director of palliative care at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts.

Moreover, longevity is not the only priority, and sometimes not the primary one, for older people considering medical options. What will life look like if they do survive?

“After elderly people have been on a ventilator, they’ve often already developed physical debilitation, difficulty swallowing, bedsores,” Dr. Thakore explained. They frequently cycle in and out of hospitals with complications. Their deficits can be physical or cognitive or both, and are often permanent.

Even pre-Covid, after 14 days on a ventilator in an I.C.U., only about one in five older discharged patients went home. “The others end up in nursing homes,” Mr. Banach said. “Some may later go home, and some will die in the nursing home.”

Though older adults with Covid-19 may not require hospitalization or ventilation, the decisions they face if they do highlight the importance of reviewing advance directives.

A new study in JAMA Internal Medicine questioned 180 patients over age 60 with serious illnesses; most said they would trade a year of life if that meant they could avoid dying in an I.C.U. on life support.

But that kind of aggressive care is exactly what they might receive. “If you don’t let the system know your wishes, the system takes over,” Mr. Banach pointed out. Family members can feel lingering trauma if they’re forced to make life-or-death decisions for loved ones who never discussed what they wanted.

“Many older patients we’ve encountered with Covid-19 have opted not to undergo ventilation and an I.C.U.,” Dr. White said. “No one should impose that on a patient, though if there’s true scarcity, that may arise. But patients might choose it for themselves.”

If older people have paperwork stashed in a drawer or safe, now is the time to unearth it and see if their instructions still reflect their values. If so, scan the document and send it to family members and doctors, Mr. Banach advised.

But for those who never got around to drawing up advance directives, appointing a decision maker — and telling that person what’s acceptable and what’s not — is ultimately more crucial. In emergencies, doctors probably won’t flip through documents to learn patients’ wishes; they’ll ask family or friends.

Mr. Banach’s counsel: “Take out your phone and do a video selfie: ‘This is who I am. This is the date. This is what I want.’ Send it to your friends and relatives. That’s enough.”

Many hospitals and health systems have developed workarounds when documents require signatures or witnesses; some are also doing palliative-care visits via telemedicine.

Dr. Gregg VandeKieft, a palliative care specialist with Providence Health on the West Coast, recently spent half an hour on Zoom talking with a patient’s sons about her end-of-life care. Dr. VandeKieft and a nurse were in Olympia, Wash.; one son was in Alaska and two elsewhere in Washington. “It felt not all that different than if we’d been in the same room,” Dr. VandeKieft said.

The coronavirus pandemic may spur more such conversations. In Los Angeles recently, Brie Loskota and her husband contacted close family friends, a couple in their 70s, asking about their well-being, offering to FaceTime, and then inquired: “If you got sick, is there anything we should know?”

The older couple, one of whom has a neurodegenerative disease and has already experienced mechanical ventilation, responded that they both wanted to avoid hospitalization and to die at home.

“It was a relief to be told,” said Ms. Loskota. “It’s not less heartbreaking, but it lets us make a decision with them in mind. It led my husband and me to talk about it for ourselves.” They’re in their 40s and have not yet drafted advance directives.

Complete Article HERE!

Why You Should Request an Extra Layer of Support When Living with a Serious Illness

By Andrew Esch, MD

Did you know that most large hospitals in the U.S. have a specialized medical team that uniquely cares for people living with serious illnesses? If you or a loved one has any type of cancer, heart or kidney disease, dementia/Alzheimer’s disease, or any other serious illness, you should know about this extra layer of medical support. It’s called palliative care and focuses on relieving symptoms and stress that so often come with these kinds of illnesses.

The goal of palliative care (pronounced pal-lee-uh-tiv) is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family. Palliative care is provided by a specially-trained team of doctors, nurses and other specialists who work together with a patient’s other doctors to provide an extra layer of support. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness, and it can be provided along with curative treatment.

Experts in Symptom Management, Care Coordination and More

Your palliative care team has expert training in managing symptoms and treatment side effects. Palliative care teams help patients and families in many ways, like avoiding unwanted and unnecessary trips to the hospital.

In addition, they will make sure you have the support you need to make informed decisions about your care. Having a serious illness often means having many doctors. Your palliative care team will make sure that you, your family, and your doctors are all on the same page. They will take the time to get to know you, help you plan goals for your treatment, and coordinate with your other doctors to match your treatment options to your goals.

Palliative Care is Available in Many Settings and Most Hospitals

As of 2019, more than 70% of hospitals (with 50 or more beds) in the U.S. have a palliative care team to help people living with a serious illness. And when people receive palliative care during hospital stays, they spend fewer days in the intensive care unit, have less pain, and are happier with the care that they receive. They may also be less likely to end up back in the hospital. Palliative care is also becoming more available outside of the hospital, in clinics and at home.

What This Means for You

If you or a family member are living with a serious illness, ask your doctor for a palliative care referral as early as possible. To find out which hospitals or clinics provide palliative care where you live, search this Palliative Care Provider Directory.

To learn more about palliative care, visit GetPalliativeCare.org, an online resource with clear, comprehensive palliative care information for people living with a serious illness. The site is provided by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC).

Complete Article HERE!

Love is not enough for end of life decisions…

This ground breaking video is challenging the commonly held perception that a loving relationship is all you need to ensure your end-of life wishes will be met.

The launch of the video is timed to stimulate interest and discussion in the lead up to the third annual, National Advance Care Planning Week, 23 – 27 March, an initiative led by Advance Care Planning Australia (ACPA), with funding from the Australian Government.

Produced by the award-winning Creativa video production agency, the Love is Not Enough video introduces two couples and one father and daughter, testing how well they know their loved one. While they were mostly able to correctly answer questions about preferred foods and holiday destinations, when it came to questions about end-of-life treatments they were less sure.

Interviewees were confronted with tough hypothetical treatment decisions for their loved ones including whether they would accept tube feeding following a stroke or extend their cancer treatment if it meant never leaving hospital.

This discrepancy is backed up by research[1]that shows that the people closest to us often don’t know our end-of-life wishes unless we expressly have the conversation or write our preferences in an Advance Care Directive.

“We created this video to shine a light on the fact that even with those closest to us, it is wrong to assume they would know our preferences for end-of-life care,” explains ACPA Program Director, Linda Nolte.

“While the questions posed in the video may seem confronting, these real-life scenarios play out every day in hospitals across Australia. It’s a terrible burden for families to bear having to blindly make life and death decisions, without knowing their loved one’s preferences. A simple discussion today can save a lot of heartache tomorrow.

“Despite legislative and policy support for advance care planning across Australia, public understanding and uptake remains low. People need to know that a loving relationship is no substitute for advance care planning. The person closest to you may not be the best choice to make decisions for you if you become too unwell to speak for yourself.

“With National Advance Care Planning Week coming up, it’s an opportunity for all of us to consider our future medical care, whether it’s attending an event or having a chat with loved ones. I urge all Australians to join us and find out more,” says Ms Nolte.