57 How the west was won!

<h3></h3> This presentation provides a summary of how a small, autonomous, nurse led team has become one of Queensland’s leading health services in the implementation and uptake of Advance Care Planning (ACP). Reflections on both triumphs and challenges will be shared which may assist health services about to embark on commencing ACP or for established services facing challenges of high demand and limited resources. West Moreton Health Service (WMH) were pioneers in introducing ACP to Queensland back in 2007, which included the development of what is widely used as the Queensland Statement of Choices document. Due to dedicated, committed team members a gold standard of service delivery has been established resulting in over 14,000 ACP documents now available in homes for first responders and uploaded onto patient records. The wider community is engaged with, delivering public education to service &amp; interest groups, regular in-services are provided to internal medical, nursing &amp; allied health staff within the regional health service &amp; connections have been made with external health providers including GP doctors. The WMH ACP Team receive almost 2000 referrals for face-to-face appointments a year from a variety of sources. Requests are made to meet with patients in a diverse range of settings -including their home, inpatients, hospital clinics, aged care facilities and even a coffee shop or two. The ACP team has grown from the original sole Project Officer to the current two full time Clinical Nurse Consultants and one part time Clinical Nurse. In 2024 this small team were able to conduct 1200 personal ACP discussions, where documents were assisted to be drafted. This resulted in 882 completed documents returned &amp; processed, uploaded onto a state health data base and in homes for first responders. A recent survey demonstrated a very high satisfaction from the patients who used the service. An example of feedback received is – ‘Thank you so much for what was a truly lovely meeting yesterday. Due to how gently and intuitively you took us through the process, we actually found it to be a rather pleasant experience overall, when we thought we were going to be bawling.’ The ACP Nurses experience challenges on a daily basis to meet the high demand of referrals in one of Australia’s fastest growing areas. Solutions and other helpful advice and lessons learnt over the past 18 years will be shared from the ‘soldiers in the trenches’.