More New Zealanders should be planning for how they want to be cared for in their final days while they're still healthy, a new public health campaign says.
The campaign, Kia Korero, aims to normalise conversations about dying.
Pusi Urale is a retired teacher that never really retired.
“There's so much to learn, I'm very adventurous, as soon as my husband died I started painting fulltime, so I wake up to paint,” she told 1 NEWS.
She is one of six New Zealanders heading a campaign to get kiwis talking about how they die.
“So my children know not to put me in a home even if I wanted too,” she said.
The campaign is aiming to get people to complete advanced health care plans that include documents that lay out how you want to be looked after in your last days.
“Sometimes at the end of life patients are given far too much treatment that is not dignified, not pleasant and may even be quite bad for the patients with no real prospect of benefit,” Dr Alan Merry, the Health Quality and Safety Commission chairman, told 1 NEWS.
“We strongly recommend any sort of planning for the end of life for example enduring powers of attorney where you effectively designate a person to act on your behalf,” Paul Sullivan of Dementia New Zealand told 1 NEWS.
In two of our largest district health boards, 6000 people have electronically registered advance care plans.
The Canterbury DHB is measuring the impact of those plans and it's found 60 per cent have died in their preferred place of death, with half as many patients dying in hospital as compared to the general population.
Inevitably because these plans are linked to Mrs Urale's last days, she's also planned her funeral and wants a song from her famous son, King Kapisi, to accompany her coffin.
Before that though there's still a lot of living to do, including an upcoming exhibition.
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