Getting people to express preferences for future medical care in a way that provides adequate clarity to enable effective implementation (at a time of future crisis) is difficult.

Effective programs need to include strategies to encourage engagement, tools to assist the thought process, approaches to address ambiguity and inconsistency together with systems to engage families and doctors in the decisions.

Steps include encouraging conversation, advertising and marketing, providing case study examples to elicit choices, eliciting values, integration with other end-of-life choices (eg living arrangements).

Ideal delivery systems are also unclear, should this be a face-to-face process, or Internet or paper … or some combination?

This is a psychologically interesting and fiendishly difficult dilemma. We are just starting to sort it out. There are may different ideas from across the word.

This workshop will ensure that participants can hear about the best ideas and incorporate them into their programs.