Advance Care Planning Protects Your End‑of‑Life Wishes

3: Identify the Type of Health Care Interventions You Want

Advance directives are documents that specify the medical care you want to receive. A living will is the most common type of advance directive. A living will states your preferences for palliative and hospice care. It also confirms whether you want to use life support interventions such as feeding and breathing tubes, or if you want your care team to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) if your heart stops. Your doctor can explain the benefits and risks of each so you can decide what’s best for your situation.

Advance directives are typically used to plan for an illness or accident that may occur in the future. But when these situations become your reality, you can take additional steps to protect your end-of-life decisions. Talk to your doctor to learn more about these options.

4: Formalize Your Health Care Decisions and Share Them

Forms are available to document your POA for health care, living will, and advance directives. Hospitals and other care facilities require this paperwork if medical decisions need to be made on your behalf. This signed paperwork helps ensure that medical staff will make decisions that reflect your wishes.

This paperwork is very important, especially if you have specific end-of-life wishes or designate a friend or unmarried partner as your POA for health care.

There are lots of free resources you can use to prepare this paperwork. Information about POA for health care, living wills, and advance directives can be found at:

Take some time to go through these resources. If you have questions about how to fill out the forms, ask your doctor for guidance.

In most cases, these forms are state-specific. If you might move to another state to receive end-of-life care, you should complete forms for that state as well as the state you currently live in.

Once the forms are completed, make paper and digital copies for your records. Share these forms with your loved ones and your doctors. Make sure that your POA for health care has digital copies of all forms. Having easy access to these forms allows you to get the care you want without delay.

5: Revisit Your Health Care Decisions if Things Change

Things change. And health care decisions are no different. If, at any time, you want to update these documents or your POA for health care, you can do so. Review these documents regularly to make sure they reflect your current wishes and values.

It’s Time to Start Planning

The importance of ACP cannot be underestimated. This is especially true for people in communities of color, where disparities in access to the full range of care plus health care bias can continue through end-of-life care. ACP can reduce the impact of these because you set your health care expectations — on your terms, in accordance with your values. With a living will and advance directives to guide medical decision-making, and a trusted person as your POA for health care, you can receive the end-of-life care you want.