We’ve found a good, practical, user-friendly resource that can help you with advance care planning if you become ill with Covid-19.
The following message comes from, the US, one of the busiest countries dealing with Covid-19. Thank you very much to Colorado Care Planning at https://coloradocareplanning.org/ who helped us track this down.
We hope to gather Australian resources too.
“During this pandemic, many hospitalised people may not be able to speak for themselves, and sadly, family and friends cannot visit,” says Dr Rebecca Sudore, founder and director of Prepare for Your Care.
“Our frontline health care providers are desperate for any information about their patients’ medical wishes. One of the most time-consuming challenges health care workers are facing right now is finding their patients’ health care proxy,”
This is good to know. It shows two very important things:
One: Health care workers want to know what your wishes are – even in the busiest of places managing Covid-19.
Two: The second, less obvious thing it shows, is that the staff, whose time is very limited, will be under added pressure if you haven’t thought in advance about what you want.
The ‘Prepare for Your Care’ team suggests three steps:
1) make a hospital go bag,
2) choose a medical decision maker, and
3) talk to your families about your health care wishes.
Yes, not just even in, particularly in, Covid-19 times. Your family or decision maker may not be able to be in the room with you, if you are in an intensive care unit (ICU). But you can ask for communication to be organised between the ICU team and your decision maker.
To find out more about Prepare for Your Care, go to: https://prepareforyourcare.org/welcome
This posting follows up yesterday’s questions about advance care directives in Covid-19 times.
To think about this properly, it’s a good idea to have a better sense of the steps in the critical care of Covid-19 patients. Our plan is to bring these to you tomorrow. In the meantime, to understand critical care better, go to this very good UK resource:
http://healthvideos.hci.digital/criticalcare
We recommend your first video in this set would be (the last one!) :
