Metro South Health's End-of-Life Strategy – My Care, My Choices (PDF, 360.4 KB) aims to provide clear and useful tools and guidelines to improve end-of-life care across Metro South Health facilities and services. The strategy promotes consistent practice and informs the development of training, governance and quality systems that support the key end-of-life clinical processes.

The expected outcomes of the My Care, My Choices Strategy are:

• increased awareness across the community, both public and clinical, of the benefits and components of end-of-life care
• clinician use of a best practice framework for end-of-life care which is embedded into routine practice across MSH
• patients routinely given the opportunity to participate in the process of advance care planning, including the nomination of a substitute decision maker
• clear documentation and storage of a person’s end-of-life care preferences in a way that facilitates change by the individual as required and which are easily retrieved by clinicians
• early identification of patients who will have, or are anticipated to have, shortened life expectancy as a result of known conditions. This includes providing these people with a realistic understanding of their disease progression and available care choices
• comprehensive care management plans in line with the person’s preferences and delivered within a framework of care developed, documented and available to all those involved in the care
• terminal phase care is well managed irrespective of the environment of care
• health system limitations which are currently barriers to end-of-life care are addressed
• patients, families and carers have greater access to end-of-life services
• end-of-life care meets established clinical safety and quality standards.

Read more about My Care, My Choices.