Advance Care Planning Victoria

What Advance Care Planning Actually Means in Victoria

Advance care planning is the process of thinking about, discussing, and documenting your preferences for future medical treatment — in case you lose the capacity to make or communicate those decisions yourself. In Victoria, this process is anchored by the Medical Treatment Planning and Decisions Act 2016, which gives documented preferences genuine legal force.

It's not just filling out a form. The form — the Advance Care Directive — is the final output of a process that involves understanding your own values, having clinical conversations with your GP, discussing your wishes with family, and then distributing the completed documents to the right people. Skipping the process and jumping straight to the form is how people end up with directives that are technically valid but practically useless.

The Building Blocks of a Victorian Advance Care Plan

A complete plan involves multiple documents and conversations:

1. Values clarification. Before you write anything down, identify what matters to you. What does quality of life mean to you? What outcomes of medical treatment would be unacceptable? Would you trade length of life for comfort? Would you want to be kept alive if you couldn't recognise your family? There are no right answers — but having answers is what makes the rest of the process meaningful.

2. Advance Care Directive (ACD). The formal document where your treatment preferences become legally binding. An ACD can contain values directives (broad statements about your goals for care), instructional directives (specific treatment refusals or consents that clinicians must follow), or both.

3. Medical Treatment Decision Maker (MTDM) appointment. Names the person who will make medical decisions when you lack capacity. Only one MTDM can act at a time, and they must follow any instructional directives in your ACD.

4. Support Person appointment. An optional but valuable role — someone who helps you engage with clinical teams while you still have capacity but may need assistance processing information or communicating.

5. Enduring Power of Attorney (EPOA). Covers financial and personal matters (not medical decisions — that's the MTDM). A separate document under a separate Act, but part of the same planning suite.

6. The clinical conversation. A structured discussion with your GP where you translate personal values into specific clinical language. This is also when the GP witnesses your ACD.

7. Distribution. Getting copies of your completed documents to your GP, hospital, specialists, MTDM, and My Health Record.

The Advance Care Planning Checklist

This condensed checklist tracks the full process from values clarification through to distribution:

• ☐ Reflect on your values and treatment preferences
• ☐ Research the Victorian legal framework (ACD, MTDM, EPOA, Support Person)
• ☐ Choose your MTDM and discuss the role with them
• ☐ Consider appointing a Support Person
• ☐ Download statutory forms from the Victorian Department of Health (free)
• ☐ Draft your ACD — values directives and/or instructional directives
• ☐ Book a GP appointment for the witnessing and clinical conversation
• ☐ Arrange a second adult witness (who is not your MTDM)
• ☐ Sign the ACD with both witnesses physically present
• ☐ Complete and sign the MTDM appointment form
• ☐ Distribute copies to GP, hospital, specialists, and MTDM
• ☐ Upload to My Health Record
• ☐ Store the original securely and tell your MTDM the location
• ☐ Set a review reminder for two years or after any major health change

Planning in Specific Contexts

Aged care entry. Moving into a residential aged care facility is one of the strongest triggers for advance care planning. The ACD should address aged-care-specific scenarios: hospital transfer preferences, antibiotic treatment for infections, artificial nutrition, and resuscitation. Provide the facility with a copy during admission and confirm it's entered into their care management system.

Dementia diagnosis. An early-stage dementia diagnosis makes advance care planning urgent. Capacity can decline unpredictably, and once it's gone, you can no longer create or modify your ACD. Complete the planning process as soon as possible after diagnosis. Consider involving a solicitor to document the capacity assessment, which provides protection against future challenges from family members who might argue the directive was signed after capacity was lost.

Hospital pre-admission. Many Victorian hospitals now ask about advance care planning during pre-admission for elective procedures. If you're scheduled for surgery, bring your ACD and MTDM appointment to the pre-admission clinic and ask that they be added to your hospital record.

Chronic illness management. If you're managing a chronic condition — heart failure, kidney disease, COPD, cancer — advance care planning should be integrated into your ongoing clinical care. Review your directive whenever your condition progresses or your treatment regime changes significantly.

Where to Get the Forms

All statutory forms are free and available from two official sources:

• Victorian Department of Health — health.vic.gov.au/advance-care-planning/forms (ACD and MTDM forms)
• Office of the Public Advocate Victoria — publicadvocate.vic.gov.au (EPOA forms and guides, plus ACD resources)

Both sites provide the forms as downloadable PDFs. Neither charges for them, and neither requires registration. If anyone asks you to pay for "the official form," it's not official.

The Gap Between Forms and a Working Plan

The forms are well-designed for what they are — statutory instruments that capture your legal preferences. But they're blank templates. They don't tell you what to write in the treatment preferences section. They don't coach you through the GP conversation. They don't help you have the family discussion. And they don't remind you to distribute copies once you've signed.

That gap — between a blank form and a functional, distributed, clinically actionable advance care plan — is where most planning efforts stall. People download the form, feel overwhelmed by the blank fields, and put it in a drawer.

The Victoria Advance Directive & Living Will Kit fills that gap with clinician-approved phrasing templates, a GP consultation worksheet, a family conversation planner, and a document distribution log — turning the blank form into a complete, actionable plan that your clinical team can follow when it matters.

See more Victoria guides →