Document medical wishes

Whether you’re planning for yourself or a loved one, it is vitally important to document healthcare wishes. Failure to do so can lead to family conflict or unnecessarily aggressive and expensive end-of-life care. Additionally, the instinct to do everything to keep a loved one alive can sometimes take over and skew one’s perspective. In these situations, clear instructions are incredibly helpful to physicians, the patient, and the family.

To provide these instructions, we recommend using an advance directive. Advance directives are legal, written instructions that document a person’s medical wishes should they be unable to make decisions for themselves in such situations. They may help family and friends of the patient avoid disagreements over decision-making during such a difficult time, while allowing allow doctors to provide the best medical care for the patient as they near the end of their life. (For more about the benefits of advance directives, click here.)

Below are find resources on how to document medical wishes for you or a loved one that are specific to your state, provided by NHPCO in cooperation with CaringInfo. If you encounter difficulty filling out the forms on your own or someone else’s behalf, we recommend talking to your doctor.

You can also access some general resources on how to talk to a doctor about documenting medical wishes at The Conversation Project.

(Part of this consideration should also be focused on organ donation. To find out more about why you or the loved one you’re planning for should be an organ donor, and to check eligibility, click here.)

Here are the forms that need to be filled out for an advance directive, arranged alphabetically by state:

planning, important documents, getting organizedJennifer Goodimportant documents, medical and legalComment