Aged residential care-specific resources

It has never been more important to understand what matters most to your residents and their whānau, to be prepared for any future change in their health and to know what their priorities, concerns and preferences might be if their health did deteriorate.

In addition to the resources elsewhere on this webpage, we have developed some specific aged residential care resources (ARC) to support you and other staff working in ARC to use the Serious Illness Conversation Guide and capture any shared goals of care for residents


Shared goals of care discussions are part of the overall assessment and planning for residents.

We recommend that you aim to have this discussion during the first two or three weeks of a resident’s stay as part of the admission process and development of their long-term plan.

The discussion is not a one-off discussion. It would be ideal to revisit the shared goals of care decision with the resident and whānau as part of regular care plan reviews or where there has been a significant change in the resident’s health.

We recommend that shared goals of care discussions are led by a senior clinician after he/she has gathered as much information as possible from the wider care team working with the resident.

When to have shared goals of care discussions


We have created a 25-minute-long video demonstrating how to prepare for, talk about and capture goals of care for your residents. This demonstration video is just one example of a shared goals of care discussion. We created this example using Zoom as we were under COVID level 3 at the time of recording. Ideally these discussions would take place in person.

We have used the Aotearoa Serious Illness Conversation Guide to support this shared goals of care discussion.

This video is a supplement to the Serious Illness Conversation Guide training video and we recommend that before you watch this ARC video that you watch the Serious Illness Conversation Guide communications skills training video and have copies of the Aotearoa Serious Illness Conversation Guide and ARC shared goals of care form in front of you.

Serious Illness Conversation Guide and shared goals of care in aged residential care (video: 25.43mins)

Demonstration video


ARC shared goals of care form


Relevant resources

We have created an ARC-specific shared goals of care form, to capture the discussion and document the shared goals of care for residents.

Shared goals of care aged residential care form (fillable PDF)

There are two factsheets that will help you use this form.

Fact sheet for nurses and Allied health workers supporting shared goals of care decisions (PDF)

Fact sheet for clinicians responsible for the shared goals of care decisions in aged residential care (PDF)

The form is a fillable PDF you can add your facility’s logo to. If you do use it and want to save it as a final version that cannot be edited, you will need to 'Print to PDF' before you save or share it. See the PDF below for instructions on how to do that.

How to save a final version of an electronic shared goals of care form using the Print to PDF function