Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights
The Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights is for everyone. It's a guide to how you should be treated during your care.
It aims to help patients, their families, carers and other support people get the most out of their health care.
Your responsibilities
It’s important that you ask questions and talk about your health care before you make decisions.
To help us provide you with the best possible care, please tell us about any:
- medicines, drugs or remedies you use
- beliefs that may affect your treatment
- problems with your treatment, or if you feel you need different treatment
- other health professionals that are treating your condition
- plans to leave your hospital unit, even for a short time.
If you’ve agreed to treatment, please follow the instructions we give you. If you’re waiting for treatment and your condition changes, see your GP.
We ask you to treat our staff and patients with respect and consideration while you’re in our care.
Planning your treatment and care
When you're in hospital, you'll often see nurses and other staff at your bedside discussing your care. We call this a clinical handover. It allows the nurses to discuss your care to make sure it continues as planned. These discussions can include doctors and other health professionals.
During clinical handover, you'll meet the nurse coming on duty for the next shift. The nurses may share:
- your medical history
- your current clinical condition
- tests and procedures that you've had, or you'll have soon
- what help you need with daily tasks such as showering and toileting
- plans for your discharge, even if it's a few days away.
You can ask questions and talk to the nurses and other staff about your condition and health care. You can also ask a friend or family member to be at your clinical handover.
Making health decisions
Advance care planning
Advance care planning is thinking about and making choices now that will guide your future care.
Some people have strong beliefs about what they want to happen with their care in the future. If you do, it's important to make your plans and wishes known now.
You might need to make some tough decisions while you're in hospital. These could be about your treatment and care if you're seriously ill or facing the end of life.
We encourage you to discuss options with your health care team, family and carers.
It’s important for you to give clear instructions about your preferences and beliefs. You should also let your family and health care team know about any advance health directive or power of attorney that you've made.
Find out more about advance care planning on the Queensland Government website. They also have different advance care planning documents you can use to help make your wishes clear.
Acute resuscitation plan
This is a medical order about the treatments you want if you become very unwell and can't speak for yourself.
Find out more about acute resuscitation plans on the Clinical Excellence Queensland website.
Register as an organ and tissue donor
You can register to donate your organs or tissue when you die, or as a living donor.
Make sure you tell your family and friends if you want to be a donor. You can include your wishes in advance care planning.
To find out more, go to DonateLife.
Raise concerns about a patient's health (Ryan's Rule)
Ryan's Rule is a 3-step process to support patients of any age, their families and carers, to raise concerns if a patient’s health condition is getting worse or not improving as well as expected.
Read more about the Ryan’s Rule process on the Clinical Excellence Queensland website.
Access to information
You have the right to ask for information about us, and to ask about information we hold about you.
Learn more about your right to information and your health record.