Advance care planning – Medical Law Matters

Part one explores the basics of advance care planning, and how it can help when making difficult healthcare decisions. Zoe explains that advance care planning is an umbrella term that covers the discussions that patients, carers, families and healthcare professionals have about the treatment options and health outcomes they want in the future – the treatments and outcomes patients prefer when they have mental capacity to make the decisions, and what they might want to happen if they don’t have the capacity to decide for themselves.

Part two looks at the Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment (ReSPECT) process, which creates personalised recommendations for a person’s care in an emergency, as well as how to choose the right time to have meaningful patient/clinician conversations around advance care plans and sharing the decision making with family and carers.

The podcasts also cover the importance of making sure that treatments are given in patients’ best interests, what to do when there are uncertainties around patient choice and explores some of the issues around lasting power of attorney and advance decisions to refuse treatment.