Advance Care Planning
Health NZ Te Whatu Ora describes Advance Care Planning as ‘a process of thinking and talking about your values and goals and what your preferences are for your current and future health care.’ It is something that we believe strongly in at Ostend Medical Centre and want to encourage our patients to engage with, no matter their stage of life. Advance Care Planning can be thought of as a five-step process and the information below about what each step might entail has been provided by Health NZ.
- What do you need to think about?
- What is important to you and gives your life meaning?
- Are there any treatments or types of care that you would or wouldn’t want?
- Who would you want to make decisions on your behalf if you weren’t able to?
- If there was a choice, how and where would you like to spend your last days?
2. Who do you need to talk to about it?
Once you have thought through some of the issues, it’s a good idea to talk about them. Then others will know what is important to you and what you would like to happen, especially if you’re not able to speak for yourself. You may want to share your thoughts with family, friends, your health care team or your designated Enduring Power of Attorney.
3. What should you put in a written plan?
When you know what’s important to you, and what you want others to be clear about, it’s a good idea to write it down. Having it in writing can save whānau and health care teams a lot of worry and concern if they have to make a decision on your behalf.
4. Who will you share it with?
Once you have written down what is important to you and what you want to happen, make sure you give a copy to key family members, your GP and health care team, and your Enduring Power of Attorney if you have one.
5. When will you review it?
It’s a good idea to review the plan regularly to make sure nothing has changed for you. People find it useful to decide on a day to review it every year, like their birthday or at the time they do their tax return.
At Ostend Medical Centre, we want to support our patients as much as possible to have these conversations and make these essential plans. We have a beautiful resource available, My Advance Care Plan and Guide, which you can ask a clinician or reception staff member for. This booklet can be completed by you at home in your own time and then returned to the Medical Centre to discuss with the GP and be scanned into your medical record. If you would like support to complete the plan, Waiheke Health Trust Social Worker Rozanne Gold has been trained in helping people make Advance Care Plans and would be happy to help you. Rozanne says:
I generally work through the Advance Care Plan booklet with people without rushing them. This means going through each section and helping people to understand and talk about what they want and what they don’t want in terms of healthcare and end of life care. This will include what values and beliefs are important to them and how they want to be treated if they become unwell or are approaching the end of life. This means their wishes can be respected and saves their family and healthcare providers from making difficult decisions.
Rozanne can work with you for one or more sessions and can also provide the booklet for you to take home and complete with family if you would prefer. Please call us on 09 372 5005 if we can support you or a loved one with this important aspect of managing your healthcare.
Ka Ora Telecare
NZ’s Rural Healthcare Resource
We recently let our patients know that the island’s afterhours service, which has been run from the Waiheke Medical Centre building in recent years, is currently suspended. If you need non-emergency care outside of our opening hours, we encourage you to use Ka Ora Telecare, which is our country’s rural telecare provider.
From 5pm to 8am on weekdays and 24 hours a day on weekends and public holidays, you can access an afterhours appointment with a GP or Nurse Practitioner by calling Ka Ora Telecare on 0800 252 672. When you call you will have the option for a free chat with a nurse/kaiawhina, or to book a virtual GP appointment. GPs can provide patients with scripts and refer patients to Hato Hone St John for urgent care. We have been recommending Ka Ora to our patients since the beginning of the year and have received positive feedback about the service, which is designed for rural communities. One of the best things about Ka Ora is that it is FREE for children under 14 years and only $19.50 for those over 65 or Community Service Card Holders.
We’d encourage you to check out Ka Ora’s website and familiarise yourself with their services, so that if you do need a GP appointment outside of business hours you know how this option would work for you or your loved ones. You can find their website here: https://kaora.co.nz/app/. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about how to use Ka Ora as we’d be happy to help you.
Patient Voice Campaign
We’d like to thank all of our patients who have taken the time to write to their MPs to express their disappointment with Health NZ’s decision to continue to drastically underfund primary care. If you haven’t done so yet, there’s still time to get involved in our Patient Voice Campaign.
Ostend Medical Centre had tried to hold off from increasing our fees this year as we know households are struggling with the increased cost of living. We understood that a fee increase would only make healthcare more unaffordable and more inequitable. However, with primary care funding increasing only 4% this year, and our costs having risen more than 9% this last 12 months alone, we were left with no other choice. Together with our PHO, ProCare, we had warned the government on multiple occasions that if they didn’t increase funding levels, we would have to increase fees to help cover our costs or we would have to cut back on our services and staffing. Frustratingly, our warnings were disregarded.
We strongly encourage you to write to the Minister of Health, Dr Shane Reti, along with our local MP, Chloe Swarbrick. You can email our reception team on [email protected] and they will provide you with a templated letter and contact details so that you can do this easily and express your dismay at the increase in fees and outlining the impact the increase will have on you and your whānau.
Thank You Waiheke Tennis Club
Most of our patients know that Ostend Medical Centre is owned and operated by Waiheke Health Trust, an organisation that is very fortunate to receive wonderful support from our community. Long before the Health Trust was fundraising for x-ray or ultrasound equipment, we were grateful to the Waiheke Tennis Club for annual funding of our vehicle fleet.
Each year the Waiheke Tennis Club hosts Le Tour de Tennis, a one-day tournament that lets locals and visitors play at some of the island’s privately owned tennis courts. Funds are raised through the always sold-out registration fees and through a live auction featuring prizes from generous Waiheke sponsors. The beautiful prizes and great efforts of auctioneer Eric Pilling meant that in 2023 the event raised $17,000 for the Health Trust – an incredible result. In the past, we have put the proceeds from the tournament towards electric vehicles for our team, but this year we purchased a stunning RAV4 AWD vehicle to help our District Nurses, Occupational Therapists and Home Support department tackle some of the island’s more challenging roads and driveways.
We recently got the organizing committee of Eric and Fiona Pilling, Sarah and John Hazell, and Monika May to visit the Health Trust and have a photo taken with the new RAV4. It was great to be able to tell them how much the team has enjoyed the safety and practicality of the new vehicle, which is used frequently to get staff as well as large pieces of OT equipment out to the far end of the island. Thank you, Waiheke Tennis Club, for you wonderful efforts and consistent generosity!