My Goals of Care

Advance care planning is making a plan for future health care while you are still able to make health care decisions for yourself. It can be hard to think and talk about how a person’s health may decline before a health crisis occurs. Talking with loved ones and health professionals about your wishes and preferences for care, including conversations to continue or to decline life-support measures will help make sure you get the care you want. Don’t assume that family and health professionals know what you want.

Living with advancing stages of a serious illness can be hard. You may feel like you have lost control over your life and what will happen next to you. Making a decision to express your wishes to loved ones and to health professionals about what type of current care you desire is one of the most important things you can do.

Goals of Care are your stated preferences for current health care treatment and non-treatment decisions that reflect your values and wishes. Your health care providers will work with you to help you make decisions that are right for you. Following these shared conversations, decisions are documented by your physician or nurse practitioner on the MOST form (Medical Orders for Scope of Treatment).

MOST is a medical order that tells health care providers what treatment is to be provided. It is intended to be completed for persons with an advancing illness, or have health concerns or circumstances that are important to communicate to their health care team.

A time may come during the course of your illness when you may eat and drink less. The changes in your appetite and fluid intake may be linked to the natural course of your illness. Some illnesses can make it hard for you to swallow or can cause nausea and vomiting.

There are different ways to keep you hydrated and fed if you are not able to take food and fluids by mouth. Fluid can be given under the skin or through a line into the vein (IV). Food can be given through a line into the vein (IV) or a feeding tube. A feeding tube is placed in the stomach either through the nose or through the belly.

It is important to talk with your doctor or nurse practitioner about when to use artificial hydration and nutrition and what to expect as your illness progresses.

Learn more about artificial hydration and nutrition.

If you choose to receive CPR when your breathing or heart stops, someone will push air into your mouth and push down very hard on your chest with his or her hands. If you are in the hospital when your breathing or heart stops, a team of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals will respond.

In the hospital, the medical team may use a device called a defibrillator to apply an electrical shock to your heart. The shock may restart your heart. You may also get medicine to help your heart beat again.

After CPR has been started, you will be connected to a machine called a ventilator or respirator. A tube is placed down your throat to your lungs and is then connected to the ventilator. The ventilator pumps oxygen through the tube into your lungs. Being placed on a ventilator is referred to as "being put on life support."

Learn more about CPR and life support.

One organ donor can save up to eight lives. To be an organ donor in B.C. a patient must be in a critical care unit on a breathing machine, with no hope of recovery. Once the declaration of death has been made or when death is imminent, BC Transplant will be contacted by the hospital staff to check the Organ Donor Registry to see if the patient registered their decision. If a decision is recorded, BC Transplant will print a copy of the registration form and share the information with the patient’s family. The health care team will have a more detailed conversation with the patient’s family about organ donation and will then continue.

Learn more about the process if you would like to consider being an organ/tissue donor.

The Eye Bank of BC provides British Columbians with the opportunity to choose eye donation. Individuals can leave a legacy by providing up to eight people with corneal and sclera graft transplants. Tissue may also be used to further research efforts into the treatment and prevention of ocular disease. Interior Health has five retrievable sites for eye donation:

• Kelowna General Hospital

• Penticton Regional Hospital

• Royal Inland Hospital (Kamloops)

• South Okanagan General Hospital (Oliver)

• Vernon Jubilee Hospital

Learn more about the Eye Bank of BC

We are working hard to ensure the people within our communities have access to the highest standard of compassionate and respectful care, while ensuring staff and physicians provide services within the law. Following a Supreme Court of Canada ruling, medical assistance in dying (MAiD) is now available to all Canadians.