Digital Advance Care Plans for Margaret

"I can't believe that him scrolling the questionnaire on his phone on a sunny afternoon 2 years ago would become so important. We very much wanted to respect his wishes and help the doctors understand the life he wanted. The trauma team were so impressed that he had this readily available and easy to read plan, and were able to make decisions based on this. I very much recommend that everyone has a Touchstone Life Care plan as the decision making for his care was made so much easier."

I live in Australia, my sister lives in New Zealand and my brother lives in the UK. This would have been so useful when our dad passed away 4 years ago. Knowing what he wanted would really have made a difference.

My mum nearly lost her life last year. Her aged care facility gave a copy of her Advance Care Directive to the ambulance staff but it got lost somewhere along the way. She’d put so much careful thought into that plan and it was heartbreaking to realise it was totally useless when it was most needed.

Dad had a paper advance care plan in place. But it turned out he’d ticked ‘yes’ he wanted CPR and ‘yes’ to Do Not Resuscitate so his doctors didn’t know what to do when he went into cardiac arrest and neither did I. It was horrible.

My dad and I did our questionnaires together. It got us talking about things we had never discussed before. It was so easy.