June 2011 Advance Care Planning Conference

The Conference will be relevant to all health and social care professionals who are involved in advance care planning/end of life care and are committed to improving quality of care for patients. Delegates are invited from a wide range of backgrounds including end of life/palliative care, primary care, critical care, acute hospitals, care of the elderly, ethics and spirituality, policy development and social care.

Please Tell Me Why We Aren't Talking About Advance Care Planning

Have a look at the Respecting Choices website. A very powerful study that indicates the importance of advance care planning conversations.
Also, check out the August 2nd New Yorker for the article, Letting Go, by Atul Gawande. It's a long read for a magazine article, but it may be the most important piece you read this year. It refers to the work done at Gundersen Lutheran Hospital and the impact on the residents of La Crosse, Wisconsin. In the New Yorker article, Gawande comments on the perspective of many that death is the ultimate enemy and there is nothing reproachable in those who rage against it:

"I think of [this] every time I have a patient with a terminal illness. There is almost always a long tail of possibility, however thin. What's wrong with looking for it? Nothing, it seems to me, UNLESS it means we have failed to prepare for the outcome that's vastly more probable. The trouble is that we've built our medical system and culture around the long tail. We've created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets--and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near-certainty that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan."

Impact of a Disease-Specific Advance Care Planning Intervention

I can hardly wait for the July 2010 publication of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
The study that will be featured in this article by Kirchhoff, Hammes, Kehl, and Briggs contains data that demonstrate the striking effectiveness of the Respecting Choices® structured, patient-centered interview. The structured nature of the interview means that facilitators trained in its delivery can use the intervention with consistence and integrity. Please contact me for further information about this intervention.

Successful International Conference

The Melbourne Inaugural ACP Conference was an outstanding success. What a treat to be in the presence of such stellar healthcare leaders and to hear of the progress being made in the field of Advance Care Planning.

The speakers noted on the conference web page represented a broad range of clinical perspectives from around the world and delivered outstanding presentations.

The next international conference is being planned for London, England in June, 2011.

International ACP Conference - An Idea Whose Time Has Come

No longer a topic to be approached tentatively, fearing legal and ethical recriminations. Finally a topic to be incorporated into the everyday lives and health care of individuals--conversations to be initiated and honoured over time--a process, not an event. A fundamental human right: the right to express wishes about personal goals for future health care and have those wishes be durable through periods of decision-making incapacity. Advance Care Planning and the research supporting it will be the linchpin of the first ever International Conference on Advance Care Planning being held this April in Melbourne, Australia. International experts presenting in Melbourne include: Associate Professor W (Bill) Silvester
Austin Health, VIC (Chair)
Dr Bud Hammes
Ethicist and advance care planning expert, Wisconsin, USA
Ms Linda Briggs
Ethicist and advance care planning expert, Wisconsin, USA
Professor John Luce
Critical care and end-of-life care specialist, San Francisco, USA
Prof Malcolm Fisher AO
Intensive Care and end-of-life care specialist, Sydney, Australia
Ms Sue Grant RN, Dipl.T.
Advance care planning expert, Vancouver, Canada
Professor Jane Seymour
Palliative and end-of-life care expert, Nottingham, UK
Professor Keri Thomas
National Clinical Lead Palliative Care in the UK National Health Service End-of-life care program and Lead for the Gold Standards Framework program, Clinical Director Community Pall Care, Pan- Birmingham Palliative Care Network, Senior Clinical Lecturer Birmingham University, UK
Professor Pablo Simón Lorda
Advance care planning expert, Granada Spain
Professor Edwin C. Hui
Ethics and end-of-life care specialist, Hong Kong

Respecting Choices® ACP Tutorials and On-Site Facilitator Course

High calibre advance care planning educational materials are easy to access. These tutorials have been developed by Linda Briggs and Bud Hammes of Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation, Inc.
Reviewing these tutorials will make you want to pursue the full on-site course in La Crosse, Wisconsin. These on-site courses are offered a couple of times a year, and the next one is being held from October 26 - 28, 2009. The teaching is second to none.

Respecting Choices® - Conversations are Key

Take time to watch this well done video clip. It demonstrates the ground-breaking work of Bud Hammes and Linda Briggs at Gundersen Lutheran.
I feel so privileged to be associated with Gundersen Lutheran. The Respecting Choices® model of advance care planning is the model used to develop the Fraser Health (British Columbia)"My Voice" materials and education.