Due to aging population and an increasing number of patients with terminal illness, palliative and end-of-life care has lately become an important topic of concern in Hong Kong recently. In view of the concern over respect to patient self-determination and improvement of their quality of life at the terminal stage, the government will implement the legislative proposal of advance directives and dying in place in this year. To equip the sector with knowledge of the related topics and its impacts on palliative and end-of-life care service development, the Council publishes “Newsletter on Palliative and End-of-Life Care Service”.
The third issue of the newsletter is “The Development of Advance Care Planning in UK” (only Chinese version) is hereby issued to introduce the development of Advance Care Planning in UK over the past 40 years. We make some observations potentially related to the development of end of life care service in Hong Kong by understanding the direction of Advance Care Planning (ACP), the advantage and challenge of primary healthcare in the promotion of ACP, and the relationship between ACP and community development.