The Importance of Documenting Healthcare Wishes
Have you documented your healthcare wishes? If not, you are not alone. You may think that your loved ones know you well enough to be aware of how you want to be treated when you near the end of life? Tiy might think that they would be able to make a well-informed decision about your final wishes.
However, as can be confirmed by people who work with dying patients every day, this is not the case. The failure to voice one’s end of life wishes beforehand can lead to unfortunate outcomes such as family conflict or unnecessarily aggressive and expensive end-of-life care. The common 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 both the physicians, the patient, and the family.
Death and falling ill are topics we’d rather not think about. In our day to day life, having or not having filled out an advance care planning document does not matter much. However, as soon as we are faced with illness or get into an accident, the absence of an advance care directive becomes noticeable. Not only to us but also to our family members. They will have to take very important decisions about our well-being in a situation that is already extremely stressful and anxiety-provoking.
Perhaps you sense the urgency but are having a hard time knowing where to start? The Conversation Project offers three main resources to help you: the Conversation Starter Kit, directions on how to choose and be a health care proxy and how to talk to your doctor. These resources have been developed by experts in end of life wishes — and are all accessible for free online. These and many other resources can be found on the NHDD webpage.
If you haven’t started yet — today is a great day to have the conversation with your loved ones!
Watch this short and informative video by the Conversation Project here.