According to current New Zealand Ministry of Health data: overall people are living longer. However, the proportion of years people spend dependant on others owing to poor health, is increasing.
Often, that poor health is spent incapacitated, attending frequent healthcare appointments, enduring multiple hospital admissions and navigating the daily logistics of ingesting numerous medications.
At PreKure we believe that having a healthy lifespan is having a good life to the very end. For us, a good life is having the ability to shape one’s story through your own activities and choices. Something that is essential to sustaining meaning in life.
The reality of life is death. In modern medicine that is commonly seen as a failure and an outcome of poor management, despite in many cases prolonged suffering. We believe, we need to adopt a new approach to dying, striving for a good, and healthy death.
In New Zealand everyone has the option of completing an advanced care plan (ACP) at any time or age. This plan includes what and who is important to you, your values and the ways you would like those caring for you to look after your spiritual and emotional needs at the end of your life. Many families don’t talk about death and dying until a loved one is very unwell or unable to communicate. Often leaving the burden of decision making and knowing ‘what they would have wanted’ with loved ones.
I will leave it in the hands of a wonderful Samoan lady Pusi (a bit of a celebrity and well-known artist in South Auckland) to tell you her story.
Taken with permission from the NZ ACP website.
For all of us taking action and having an ACP facilitates the opportunity for us to think about and have ‘courageous conversations’ with whānau, family and primary health care providers, such as our GP’s to record what is important to us.
Download your own Advanced Care Plan from www.advancecareplanning.org.nz
Guest post by Sonya English, Critical Care Outreach Nurse Specialist
If you’re interested in learning more about navigating the health system our online course Medications and Navigating the Health System will give you an overview of medicine and the healthcare system and a solid grounding in the language of medicine. The course is designed to help you to be able to collaborate with health professionals more effectively, communicate well and advocate for your patient or client.