You might be starting to think about what the future could look like.
Planning ahead means thinking about your health care, your personal wishes, and the kind of support you may need over time.
Having these conversations early can make things clearer for the people around you. It helps whānau, friends, and health professionals understand what matters most to you and how you’d like to be supported.
Advanced care planning
An advance care plan is a written document that sets out how you would like to be cared for in the future. It can include your values, beliefs, and preferences, especially for times when you can’t communicate your decisions.
Creating an advance care plan gives you space to think about what matters most. It also helps you talk these things through with whānau, trusted people, and your healthcare team.
Alongside this, it’s important to have a current will and enduring power of attorney.
A will explains how your money, property, and belongings should be managed after you die. Keeping it up to date can reduce stress for your loved ones and help ensure your wishes are respected. An enduring power of attorney will identify people you would like to support or represent you if you are in a position where you are unable. You’ll find links to more information on wills and enduring power of attorney below.
If you’re unsure where to start, getting legal advice is a practical step.
Here are some useful topics to help with your planning.
You might find it helpful to think through the details of how you’d like to live and be supported.
An advance care plan can include preferences and priorities for later life, such as:
- What matters most to you and what brings you a sense of meaning
- Activities, hobbies, and interests that you value
- Your daily routines and how your time is ideally spent
- Your cultural, religious, or spiritual practices and beliefs
- What provides you with comfort, happiness, and connection
- Any worries or concerns you have about the future
- Reasons for creating your advance care plan
- How illness or reduced independence may affect daily life and what support you may need
- How decisions should be made, including who could speak on your behalf through an Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA), and how involved you want others to be
Thinking about end-of-life care can feel difficult. But it can also help you feel more prepared and reassured.
An advance care plan may also include wishes for care at the end of life, such as:
- What is most important for your comfort and dignity
- Your preferences around pain relief and medical care for symptoms, such as breathing or nausea
- What you consider is a good quality of life
- What other comforts that are important to you
- Where you would prefer to be cared for
- Whether care should focus on extending life, maintaining comfort, or both, including any decisions about resuscitation (such as a Do Not Resuscitate order)
- What you would like to happen after your death, including:
- Organ and tissue donation
- Burial or cremation preferences
- Funeral arrangements
- Your preferred final resting place
- Where important documents are kept, such as a will, enduring power of attorney, financial records, and other important paperwork
Making these choices in advance can ease uncertainty for your loved ones and help ensure your care reflects what matters most to you.
Palliative care
If you or someone you care for is living with a serious illness, you may hear about palliative care.
Palliative care focuses on comfort, support, and quality of life. It helps manage symptoms and supports both you and your whānau.
It aims to:
- Affirm life and regard dying as a natural process
- Neither hasten nor postpone death
- Provide relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
- Support physical (tinana), emotional (hinengaro), social (whānau), and spiritual (wairua) wellbeing
- Help you and their whānau maintain the best possible quality of life
- Offer support to our family, whānau, and carers during illness and after death
Palliative care can be provided at home, in hospital, in a care home, or in a hospice.
Access to palliative care is usually arranged through a GP, district nurse, or hospital doctor. You can also contact your local hospice directly to learn more about available services.
Palliative care is delivered by a team of health and support professionals working alongside you and your whānau. Support is tailored to your needs and may include managing symptoms such as pain, breathlessness, fatigue, nausea, and loss of appetite.
Assisted dying
You may have heard about assisted dying and wondered what it means.
Assisted dying is a legal option in New Zealand for some people with a terminal illness who are experiencing unbearable suffering. It involves the use of medication to relieve suffering and end life.
People have different views on this. Some may want to include their thoughts in their advance care planning. Others may not. There is no right or wrong choice. These decisions are personal and may change over time.
To be eligibility in Aotearoa New Zealand, strict legal criteria must be met. This includes having a terminal illness likely to end their life within six months, experiencing unbearable suffering, and being able to make an informed decision. Two medical practitioners must agree that the criteria are met. You will find a link below to the Ministry of Health for more information.
It is important to note that assisted dying does not replace palliative care or other health services, which remain focused on comfort, support, and quality of life.
If someone is pressuring you to consider assisted dying, this is not okay.
This may be a form of elder abuse. You can tell your doctor or nurse or contact Age Concern for support.
Discussions about assisted dying can be had with a health practitioner, but only if the topic is raised by the individual. Talking with whānau, trusted people, or counsellors may also be helpful, although this is a personal choice.
A decision to pursue assisted dying can be withdrawn at any stage.
If you are concerned about pressure or influence from others when making decisions about assisted dying, support is available. Feeling safe and able to make independent choices is important.
