Statement of Choices ACT: The Non-Binding Values Document Explained

The Statement of Choices is the most underestimated part of the ACT's advance care planning system. People tend to focus on the Health Direction (because it is legally binding) and the EPoA (because it appoints someone to act), and treat the Statement of Choices as a nice-to-have afterthought. That is a mistake.

What the Statement of Choices Does

The Statement of Choices is a non-statutory values document developed by Canberra Health Services. It captures your personal preferences, care goals, quality-of-life thresholds, and treatment priorities in your own words. It is not governed by specific legislation and carries no binding legal force.

But "non-binding" does not mean "ignored." Clinicians in the ACT are required to take a Statement of Choices into account when making treatment decisions for a patient who has lost capacity. It serves as the primary evidence of what the patient would have wanted in situations their Health Direction does not specifically cover.

When It Matters Most

A Health Direction covers specific, named treatment refusals — CPR, ventilation, artificial feeding. But medical crises rarely arrive in the neat categories your Health Direction anticipated. What if the question is not "ventilator yes or no" but "experimental treatment with a 15% chance of recovery versus palliative sedation"? What if the choice is between aggressive cancer treatment that might extend life by six months or comfort care that preserves quality of life?

These are the decisions your Statement of Choices informs. It tells your treating team and your appointed attorney what matters to you — being able to recognise your grandchildren, dying at home rather than in hospital, maintaining your dignity in a specific sense you have defined. Without it, your attorney and clinicians are guessing.

Where to Get the Form

The Statement of Choices form is included in the ACT Advance Care Planning Booklet, available through Canberra Health Services and downloadable from the ACT Government's end-of-life planning page. The current form is titled Statement of Choices (Competent Adults) and is for recording the person's own values and wishes while they have decision-making capacity. If the person has already lost capacity, ask the treating team or substitute decision-maker which documentation applies rather than completing this form as though the person were competent.

The form walks through structured sections: your personal values, the conditions under which you would want treatment continued or withdrawn, your preferences for place of care, and any specific spiritual or cultural needs.

How It Interacts With the Other Documents

The Statement of Choices sits alongside, not underneath, the Health Direction and EPoA. It does not override either one. If your Health Direction refuses ventilation, the Statement of Choices cannot be used to override that refusal. If your EPoA attorney makes a decision that conflicts with your Statement of Choices, the decision is not automatically displaced by the Statement of Choices; the attorney must act within the EPoA and statutory duties, including considering the principal's wishes.

Where the Statement of Choices adds value is in the grey zones. When your attorney is weighing a decision that your Health Direction does not cover, the Statement of Choices provides the reasoning framework. A good Statement of Choices turns "I don't know what Mum would want" into "Mum said she would rather accept the risk than live unable to communicate."

Clinical Registration

Once completed, upload a copy to the MyDHR patient portal so it appears in the Canberra Health Services clinical system. You can also upload it to your national My Health Record for visibility if you are treated interstate. Give copies to your appointed attorney, your GP, and any regular specialists.

The ACT Advance Directive & Living Will Kit includes a values conversation worksheet to help you work through the specifics before sitting down with the form — covering the clinical scenarios, quality-of-life definitions, and treatment preferences that make the Statement of Choices genuinely useful instead of generically optimistic.

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