Planning ahead for decisions about medical treatment

The Victorian Medical Treatment Planning and Decisions Act commenced on 12 March 2018.  The law creates new opportunities for everyone in the community and their nearest and dearest. It also creates new obligations on health practitioners and health services.

This new law creates binding Advance Care Directives, this means that a person can plan ahead and decide about future medical treatment, when they cannot decide for themselves. This imposes a professional obligation on health practitioners to make reasonable efforts to find out if a patient has an advance care directive, and if they do, it must be followed. There are two types of directives:

1. Values directive -This allows a person to identify, in advance of any condition that might occur in the future, their preferences and values and may include types of treatment that is appropriate for them.
2. Instructional directive -This allows a person to identify the treatment they consent to and treatment they refuse to receive.

Medical treatment decision makers are appointed to make the decisions, and follow directives, that the person would have made, wherever possible, when then they had capacity. The appointment of a support person is also possible to assist in making medical treatment decisions.

So what is capacity? It’s the ability of a person to:

• Understand information relevant to the decision to be made and what it means
• Retain the information necessary to make the decision
• Use or weigh it in relation to the decision
• Communicate the decision in some way

Until the loss of capacity, an appointed support person may assist in making decisions by, for example, collecting and interpreting information relevant to the decision.

The new law applies to health facilities and includes residential aged care, hospitals, public and private, as well as disability group homes. Health services will need to review policy, train staff and discuss advance care planning with their residents and patients

Please contact Dominique to discuss any aspect of this.  Links to useful resources will be coming soon.