Advance care planning FAQs

Advance care planning is a voluntary process of planning for future health and personal care whereby your values, beliefs and preferences are made known to guide decision-making at a future time when you cannot make or communicate your decisions.

Advance care planning is the voluntary process of planning for future health and personal care whereby your values, beliefs and preferences are made known, to guide decision-making at a future time when you cannot make or communicate your decisions.

As a part of this process, you may choose to complete an advance care planning document to record your values, beliefs, preferences and treatment decisions. Visit the Advance care planning documents and resources page to learn about the different advance care planning documents available in WA which include:

• Values and Preferences Form: Planning for my future care (PDF 486KB)
• Advance Health Directive (PDF 500KB) 
• Values and preferences statement for a person with impaired decision-making capacity (external site) – completed by another person on your behalf if you are unable to make your own decisions and do not already have an Advance Health Directive or a Values and Preference Form.

Everyone should think about starting advance care planning, no matter of your age or health. It can be particularly important for people:

• living with an advanced chronic illness or life-limiting illness
• aged 75+ years
• at risk of losing the capacity to make your own decisions.

• When you want to change your mind about any previous decisions.
• When your health or personal circumstances change (e.g. diagnosis of new illness, death of a carer/partner, change in location of care).
• When going to hospital for any treatment.
• If treatment options or medical care available for you changes (for example, a new treatment or cure for a disease you have becomes available).

If you are making a new Advance Health Directive you should use the current AHD form (PDF 500KB) prescribed under the Guardianship and Administration Act 1990.  A modified version or different template may not be considered a valid Advance Health Directive in accordance with the legal requirements of the Guardianship and Administration Act 1990.

The current form was developed through a rigorous consultation process to reflect the findings of the Ministerial Expert Panel on Advance Health Directives and the needs of the community. By using the current form, it is less likely that the validity of your AHD would be queried or challenged. Also, the Department of Health is educating health professionals on the updated form so this is the format that health professionals will be most familiar with.

If you are in doubt about the validity of your Advance Health Directive you are encouraged to seek legal advice when completing it. 

Please note that the Department of Health only provides general advice regarding Advance Health Directives, not legal advice. 

• You must sign your Advance Health Directive in the presence of 2 witnesses who are over 18 years old. At least one of the witnesses must be authorised by law to take statutory declarations. Schedule 2 of the Oaths, Affidavits and Statutory Declarations Act 2005 (external site) has the full list of people who can witness a statutory declaration.
• The witnesses must also sign this Advance Health Directive. Both witnesses must be present when each of them signs. You and the person signing for you (if applicable) must also be present when the witnesses sign.
• You cannot be forced to sign an Advance Health Directive against your will.
• Your doctor can be a witness for your Advance Health Directive.
• If you use an interpreter/ translator they to help with understanding and completing the form, they cannot sign as a witness.
• If you are physically unable to sign your Advance Health Directive, you can ask another person to sign for you. You must be present when the person signs for you.

• No. You are not legally required to register your Advance Health Directive. It is recommended that you tell people close to you and those who are involved in your care that you have made an Advance Health Directive and share a copy with them. 
• It is also recommended that you upload a copy to My Health Record. To upload your Advance Health Directive to My Health Record go to digitalhealth.gov.au (external site).
• Tip – You may need to scan your Advance Health Directive in black and white and at 300dpi to reduce the PDF file size. Documents larger than 20MB cannot be uploaded to My Health Record.

You can add additional pages to your Advance Health Directive before it is signed and witnessed. Use the additional page templates provided.

Once your Advance Health Directive is signed, you cannot make changes or add additional pages.

If you need to change your signed and witnessed Advance Health Directive, you should revoke (or cancel) your current Advance Health Directive and make a new one.

To revoke an Advance Health Directive, you must have full legal capacity. The law provides safeguards to ensure that Advance Health Directives cannot be made, amended or revoked if a person does not have capacity. There is a statement in the Advance Health Directive that allows you to indicate that you are revoking a previous version.

The WA Department of Health recommends that you write to everyone relevant (people and organisations) to tell them you have revoked (cancelled) your Advance Health Directive. This may include your GP, other health professionals, healthcare providers, family members and/or friends who currently hold a copy of your Advance Health Directive. Everyone who has an old copy of your Advance Health Directive should return it to you, and you should destroy the old copies.

No. The Advance Health Directive is only available in English and your responses must be written in English to be valid. The Guide to making an Advance Health Directive and other advance care planning information is available in multiple languages.

If you use the services of an interpreter and/or translator when making the Advance Health Directive, you and your interpreter should complete the interpreter/translator statement (PDF 433KB) and attach it to Part 5.1 of your Advance Health Directive.. It is recommended that your interpreter/translator be qualified and/or credentialed in interpreting or translating.

You can ask someone to read the Advance Health Directive to you, and you can ask for help to complete the Advance Health Directive.

If you are unable to sign your completed Advance Health Directive, you can ask someone else to sign it on your behalf. The person who signs on your behalf will have to complete the second option on the signing page in Part 6.

If you wish to ‘sign’ the Advance Health Directive yourself by making a mark of any kind, other than a signature, you must complete the marksman clause and attach it to Part 6 of your Advance Health Directive. The same witnessing requirements apply even if you use a marksman clause.

If you include a marksman clause, it is recommended that you seek legal advice from a solicitor or community legal service. 

Common Law Directives are written or verbal communications which convey a person’s wishes regarding future health and personal care to be provided or withheld in specific future circumstances. There are no formal requirements in relation to Common Law Directives. There can be significant difficulties in establishing that a particular Common Law Directive is valid at law and can be followed. For this reason they are not recommended for making treatment decisions.

An Advance Health Directive is a legal record of your decisions about treatment(s) you do or do not want to receive if you become unwell or injured in future. It can only be made by a person older than 18 years who is able to make and communicate their own decisions. The Advance Health Directive is a statutory document as it is recognised under legislation.

Statutory documents are the strongest and most formal way to record your wishes.