Your Plan, Your Way
We spend a great deal of our lives planning for something. We take time to plan for most of life’s major undertakings and events, including our education, vacations, wedding and retirement. The one important event many of us forget to prepare for is what comes after we’ve lived our full lives.
Setting Goals for What Comes Next
Advance care planning is a way to make sure you live the whole of your life the way you want to. It means having talks with the people closest to you, including your doctor and loved ones, about your wishes for nearing the end of your life. It also means making choices and creating advance directives. These are documents that spell out your wishes for the types of care and treatment you expect if you get sick. They are an important guide for your doctor, as well as your family, who may play an important role in working with your doctor on your future care.
Advance directives help you…
- Ensure that your wishes are known if you become too ill to communicate
- Retain control over your healthcare decisions
- Ensure you are comfortable in your final days
As with mapping any goal in detail, advance care planning takes careful thought—because you want your choices to be the best for you.
You Have Choices
You choose what goals to set for your advance care, and you choose how to set them.
You can decide…
- The types of care to receive or not receive in your final days
- Where you want to be
- What is important and what is not
- To plan now and be prepared, instead of putting off decisions until it may be too late
