Program
A more detailed program will be available in 2025.
Note, the program is subject to change.
Wednesday 24 September
Start: 8am
End: 5pm
Thursday 25 September
Start: 9am
End: 5pm
Friday 26 September
Start: 9am
End: 3pm
Conference Subthemes
The descriptions below provide some guidance on the types of topics that would fit within each sub-theme.
Community Engagement and Community Engaged Practice
Presentations in this sub-theme will focus on efforts to engage the community, through awareness raising and education, tools and resources, calls to action and/or collaboration with community leaders and people with lived and living experience.
Contemporary Advance Care Planning, Ethics, Law & Human Rights
Advance care planning sits at the intersection of contested areas such as informed consent, decision-making capacity, supported, shared and substitute decision-making, withdrawal and withholding treatment, and medical assistance in dying. Advance care planning is also explored with populations for whom special ethical or legal considerations may apply, such as minors, or people living with cognitive disabilities. Presentations addressing the contemporary ethical, legal and human rights debates in advance care planning would be relevant to this sub-theme.
Cultural Responsiveness & Cultural Safety
Through engagement with communities, understanding diverse ways of knowing and being, respecting and responding to cultural difference, and challenging hidden assumptions, this sub-theme will address topics of cultural responsiveness and cultural safety in advance care planning practice.
Enabling Workforce Capability
Presentations exploring ways of training and enabling the workforce to confidently and competently engage in a range of activities relating to advance care planning, serious illness conversations, goals of care discussions or clinical decision-making would fit within this sub-theme.
Holistic Approach
Advance care planning is not simply a transactional process limited to a medical treatment context. Presentations which illustrate how we can incorporate more holistic approaches to advance care planning, including conversations, stories, multi-disciplinary approaches and different domains (e.g. financial, legal, spiritual, lifestyle) would be appropriate here.
How We Make Conversations Count
Conversations are critical in advance care planning, but how are they appropriately translated into actionable agreements that can ensure a person’s preferences are met? Presentations exploring this process of translation, the interface between advance care planning and ‘goals of care’, and efforts to ensure that services and clinical decision-making is consistent with patient preferences would fit within this sub-theme.
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Inclusion & Diversity
Presentations describing ways of engaging diverse communities in advance care planning, as well as ways to make the advance care planning process inclusive and accessible, would fit within this sub-theme.
Measuring What Matters
There has been ongoing discussion and debate in the field of advance care planning, about definitions, goals and appropriate outcome measures. Presentations within this sub-theme will explore these issues, and enable further productive discussion about measures that are meaningful.
Systems Challenges and Enablers
Presentations which identify key challenges and enablers for high quality advance care planning, at the community, organisational, service and system level would fit within this sub-theme.
Technology and Innovation
This sub-theme addresses the emerging role of technology and innovative uses of technology in the advance care planning process. Presentations exploring the roles, use or risks associated with telehealth, electronic medical records, social media, apps, assistive and augmented communication (AAC) and/or artificial intelligence would be relevant within this topic.
The Impact of Advance Care Planning
Being able to demonstrate the health, social, ethical and economic impacts of advance care planning is important in ensuring that this work stays on the public agenda. Presentations which illustrate how these impacts can be evaluated and communicated to key decision-makers, would be appropriate within this sub-theme.
The Journey of Implementation
This sub-theme will explore the learnings from efforts to implement advance care planning in different contexts. By implementation we mean attempts to engage communities, embed processes, and build sustainable systems to support advance care planning in routine practice. Presentations from individuals, organisations and services who are either beginning or well-advanced on this journey would fit within this sub-theme.
The Person, Family and Lived Experience Perspective
This sub-theme will explore the authentic perspectives of people with lived and/or living experience of involvement in advance care planning in diverse contexts. Through stories, advocacy, community engagement and collaboration with professionals, presentations in this sub-theme will enlighten delegates through knowledge and expertise that comes from personal experience.