Location Details: The event will be at the highlands golf course. There is handicap parking on the East side of the building.
Session title: Advance Serious Illness Planning: A novel way to prepare people for incapacitation.
Session summary:
How prepared are Canadians for future events that lead to incapacitation and what role and responsibility do Lawyers and Financial Planners have in preparing clients to be prepared for untoward events in the future? Recent data suggest that Canadians are ill-prepared for serious illness and consequently, many receive inappropriate medical care and put their families through considerable stress and suffering. Framing advance medical care planning in the context of ‘end of life’ planning is not helpful and may be harmful. A different approach to upstream preparation needs to occur to alleviate this human suffering. A new conceptual framework for advance serious illness planning that incorporates medical, legal and financial planning will be presented and a novel tool, www.planwellguide.com will be introduced. By working together collaboratively and in a multi-disciplinary fashion, we can aid Canadians to better prepare for serious illness and incapacitation that will occur, and consequently, reduce human suffering.
Speaker Bio: Dr Daren Heyland is a native of Lethbridge, Alberta who graduated with a Doctor of Medicine from University of Alberta in 1989. He subsequently received his training in Internal Medicine, Critical Care Medicine, and Clinical Epidemiology from McMaster University. For most of his professional career, he worked at Kingston General Hospital and Queen’s University where he is still a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Clinical Evaluation Research Unit at the Kingston General Hospital. He is a champion of person-centered care and has over his career developed a number of tools and strategies to enable lay people to understand serious illness decision-making so they get the medical care that is right for them (or their loved ones). He has developed and maintains two online decision aids, www.planwellguide.com and www.myicuguide.ca.