Advance Care Directive

An ACD records YOUR wishes for medical treatment. An EPOA appoints a PERSON to make decisions. You need both. The ACD tells your EPOA (and doctors) what you actually want.

It only kicks in when you cannot communicate your own wishes — a coma, advanced dementia, brain injury. While you can talk, you make your own decisions.

• SA, WA, Qld, Tas: Advance Care Directive (statutory, legally binding)
• Victoria: Advance Care Directive — legally binding since the Medical Treatment Planning and Decisions Act 2016. Includes an instructional directive (binding on doctors) and a values directive (guides decisions). Victoria also appoints a Medical Treatment Decision Maker (MTDM) as a separate role.
• NSW: Advance Care Directive — enforceable under common law, NOT statute. NSW is the only state without specific ACD legislation. Use the NSW Health form and discuss with your GP to strengthen its legal standing.
• ACT: Health Direction
• NT: Advance Personal Plan

• Life-sustaining treatment: do you want it tried? For how long? Under what circumstances?
• CPR preferences
• Ventilation (breathing machine)
• Feeding tubes and IV fluids
• Dialysis
• Blood transfusions (some faiths refuse these)
• Pain management — how aggressive?
• Where you want to be cared for (home, hospital, hospice)
• What matters most to you in life — your values

Book a long appointment with your GP before filling in the form. Talk through the scenarios. What would you want if you had a stroke and could not speak? What about advanced dementia? What if you were in a coma with a slim chance of recovery? Your GP can explain the medical realities behind each choice.

• Upload to My Health Record (myhealthrecord.gov.au)
• Give a copy to your GP
• Give a copy to your EPOA/medical decision maker
• Give a copy to the hospital you are most likely to be taken to
• Keep the original somewhere safe and tell people where it is