A real-life situation, and too often the case, when their mother was admitted to hospital, there were three adult children and no plan. They all wanted to do the right thing. They just couldn’t agree on what that was.
That situation – caring, well-meaning people suddenly asked to make decisions on behalf of someone who can no longer make them – is more common than most of us realise.
A 2025 national study found that two in three Australians have taken no steps to plan for their future healthcare. The reasons are understandable. Thinking about a future in which you’re seriously ill, or can no longer make your own decisions, means sitting with the fact that you will die. Our minds tend to slide away from it. There’s always something more pressing, something less confronting, something that can wait.
And so the conversation stays on the ‘to-do’ list.
When there’s no plan, someone else has to guess ‘what you want’!
When a person can no longer speak for themselves — after a stroke, a serious accident, a dementia diagnosis — the people who love them are asked to make decisions on their behalf. What treatment would they want? How much intervention is too much? Where would they want to be?
Without a plan, those questions have no clear answer. Families describe the weight of it: the fear of getting it wrong, the disagreements between people who all want to do the right thing but don’t know what that is. Research consistently shows that this uncertainty causes real distress — not just grief, but a particular kind of anxiety that comes from being asked to speak for someone when you don’t know what they’d say.
Advance care planning doesn’t eliminate the difficulty of those moments. But it changes them. When wishes are known — even roughly, even informally — the people left to make decisions have something to work with. They’re carrying out someone’s wishes rather than guessing at them. That’s a meaningful difference.
What is “Advance Care Planning”?
It’s worth clearing up a common misunderstanding. Advance care planning isn’t a form you fill in when things get serious, and it isn’t only for people who are elderly or unwell.
It’s a process — a series of conversations, ideally ongoing, about what matters to you and what you’d want if you couldn’t speak for yourself.
That might include nominating someone you trust to make healthcare decisions on your behalf. It might include writing down your preferences for treatment, or where you’d want to be cared for.
It might just start with a conversation — with a partner, a family member, your GP — about your values and what a good life looks like to you in your later years.
The formal documents vary between states and territories. Queensland has its own advance health directive, which becomes legally binding if you lose decision-making capacity. But the paperwork is the end point, not the beginning. The conversation is what matters most.
The First Step Is Easy – Talk to your GP
The easiest place to start is with your GP.
A doctor who knows you over time — your health history, your family situation, what you value — is well placed to help you think through what you’d want and how to document it. It doesn’t need to be a long appointment dedicated solely to this. It can begin as part of a regular health conversation.
The hardest part, for most people, is just deciding to start the conversation. National Advance Care Planning Week, running 16–22 March, is as good a reason as any.
Come and talk to one of the Sandstone Healthcare Team, and get the conversation started!
