Advanced Care Planning

About our Client

As health and disability service funders and providers, the Northern Regional Alliance (NRA) provides support to the Northern Region District Health Boards (DHBs). One of NRA's main goals is to ensure a regionally consistent approach to the planning and development of health services and patient safety campaigns.

NRA partnered with the National Advance Care Planning Cooperative to drive a collaborative approach to the design and implementation of Advance Care Planning in New Zealand. Advance Care Planning (or ACP) is the process of thinking about, talking about and planning for future health care and end-of-life care.

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The Brief

The NRA contracted Optimism as their learning partner to assist ACP towards its vision for all people in New Zealand to have access to comprehensive, structured and effective Advance Care Planning.

The strategy for their digital solution included building an ACP website for healthcare workers to access their information along with development and delivery of interesting, exciting and non-standard education modules for the healthcare sector and the general public.

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Our Role

We worked collaboratively with NRA and ACP to create their digital solution, which included the following elements:
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Website

We developed a responsive Advance Care Planning website to disseminate ACP information and resources.
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eLearning modules

We designed a series of five eLearning modules that were targeted at health care workers but were also available to the public. This digital learning equips healthcare workers with everything they need for Advance Care Planning, from planning tools and understanding of legalities to communication techniques and how to capture plans for their patients.

Learning Management System

The final part of the solution was integrating with the ACP Learning Management System (LMS) to track and monitor ongoing uptake and achievement of the eLearning modules by healthcare professionals.

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The Results

• The NZ ACP Programme is being recognised internationally as a leader in the field. As the Programme Director says "We receive compliments and questions on how others can develop such a useful learning tool."
• Website traffic has increased - from around 500 hits per month to over 2,000 per month.
• Awareness of ACP has increased - "Since the programme has been active we have moved from having to explain the terminology, to ACP being readily incorporated into many health care programmes in NZ." This is attributable in part to the promotion and accessibility of the website.
• eLearning and resources promoting ACP are readily available - and provides Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points as accredited by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners

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