Advance Care Planning in Winnipeg: Resources and How to Start

If you're in Winnipeg and starting to think about advance care planning, the good news is that the city has more resources for this than almost any other community in Manitoba. The challenge is that these resources are scattered across health authorities, government offices, community organizations, and clinical programs — and nobody hands you a single checklist that ties them all together.

Here's what's actually available and how to use it.

Shared Health and the Former WRHA

Shared Health (which absorbed the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority's clinical operations) runs advance care planning programs across Winnipeg's hospitals and care facilities. If you're a patient in any Winnipeg hospital, your clinical team can initiate a Goals of Care conversation and help complete the standardized Goals of Care form — the clinical document that translates your preferences into one of three treatment levels (Comfort, Medical, or Resuscitative).

Shared Health also provides educational materials on advance care planning, including conversation guides for families and information about how directives interact with clinical care. These resources are most commonly encountered during hospital admissions or personal care home intake, but you don't have to wait for a health event to access them — you can request them through your family physician or directly from the health authority.

The limitation of the Shared Health resources is that they focus almost exclusively on the clinical side: Goals of Care, treatment preferences, and proxy appointments. They don't address financial planning (Enduring Power of Attorney), estate documents, or the practical logistics of storing and distributing your directive.

Your Family Physician

Your Winnipeg family doctor or nurse practitioner is one of the most underused resources for advance care planning. They can:

• Help you think through treatment preferences in the context of your actual health status
• Discuss what each Goals of Care level would mean for your specific conditions
• File a copy of your completed health care directive in your medical chart
• Scan your directive into the electronic medical record system, making it accessible within the health authority network

If you're not sure where to start the planning process, booking a dedicated appointment with your physician specifically for advance care planning is a practical first step. Most physicians will welcome the conversation — it makes their job easier during future emergencies if your wishes are already documented and on file.

The ERIK Kit Program

Winnipeg's fire department and community organizations distribute Emergency Response Information Kits (ERIK) — the clear plastic pocket that goes on your refrigerator with a red door sticker to alert paramedics. Winnipeg paramedics are specifically trained to look for this kit when they arrive at a home.

ERIK kits are typically available free through the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service, community centres, and seniors' organizations. The kit should contain your completed Health and Medication form, a copy of your signed health care directive, and your organ donation card.

If you've completed a directive but haven't set up an ERIK kit, you're missing the link between your legal document and the first responders who may need to read it.

Community and Nonprofit Resources

Several Winnipeg-based organizations provide advance care planning support:

Palliative Manitoba offers caregiver education, grief counselling, and end-of-life planning resources. Their programs are particularly helpful for families navigating the transition to palliative care or personal care home admission.

The Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association runs national Advance Care Planning Day campaigns and provides bilingual resources that apply in Manitoba.

Dying With Dignity Canada offers detailed multi-page advance directive templates that include clinical scenario options and MAID-related planning. Their forms are more comprehensive than the basic government template but are focused on medical decisions — they don't address financial planning.

Community Legal Education Association (CLEA) provides free legal information about health care directives and powers of attorney in Manitoba. They offer plain-language guides and occasionally run workshops.

The Government Template

The Government of Manitoba provides a free basic health care directive template on its health website. It's legally valid — any written, signed, and dated document qualifies under The Health Care Directives Act — but the treatment section is largely blank, leaving you to figure out what to write on your own. For many Winnipeg residents, this template is the first document they encounter, and it's often the only one they complete.

The gap is that the template doesn't walk you through the medical decisions it's asking you to make. It doesn't reference Manitoba's Goals of Care levels, explain the difference between comfort care and medical care, or help you think through specific scenarios like dementia, terminal illness, or sudden cardiac arrest.

Pulling It Together

The Manitoba Advance Directive & Living Will Kit brings the clinical, financial, and practical planning pieces together in one package — the health care directive worksheet with Manitoba-specific scenario options, the EPA setup checklist with statutory witness requirements, the ERIK assembly guide, the Goals of Care reference card, and the document distribution tracker.

Winnipeg residents have access to strong institutional resources for the clinical side of planning. Where most people get stuck is connecting those clinical resources to the legal and practical steps that make a plan actually work: the EPA, the witness requirements, the document distribution, and the storage strategy that ensures your directive can be found when it matters. Starting with your family physician and building outward from there is the most efficient path.

See more Manitoba guides →