South West Healthcare’s new advanced planning officer Michele Finnigan is helping people put together their plans for death, from appointing a medical enduring power of attorney to preparing a statement of choices that maps out how people would like to be cared for and the level of medical intervention they wish to have.

Ms Finnigan recalls one woman who had spent her married life on a dairy farm.

“She was beautiful, she would have been absolutely stunning in her day,” Ms Finnigan said. “Somewhere along the line either ... her husband or she valued herself enough, or she got to the point where she could buy herself the Christian Dior perfume and that was symbolically who she was, as opposed to the woman in the dairy milking cows.”

Her advanced care plan included a specific wish. 

“If she was dying she wanted to have her Christian Dior perfume on,” Ms Finnigan said. 

“It’s not spiritual, it’s not religious, it’s just this person’s personal measure of what was important to them.”

Ms Finnigan said a “cultural shift” was under way when it came to talking about death, but she emphasised advanced care planning was not about euthanasia.

Just as people create wills, Ms Finnigan said it was important everyone over the age of 18 articulated “in writing things that are really important to them about how they want to be looked after”.

“We’re actually saying this is part of living, this is part of life and we’d like to have the peace of mind knowing that we have things in place,” Ms Finnigan said.

Robyn Harry has had experience of putting plans together for she and her husband. 

“You don’t think that anything’s going to happen to you, really, but both of you could be in a car and have a bad accident, you just don’t know,” she said.

The best way to get started on an advanced care plan is to make an appointment with your GP.

Completed forms can be dropped into the hospital’s main reception desk or the Emergency Department.