PRINCIPLES OF ADVANCE CARE PLANNING LIFE

Basic principles describe the nature of good advance care planning. The LIFE Project offers these as a guide for Kansans.

The Kansas LIFE Project encourages every Kansan to think about and plan for the kind of care you would like to receive at the end of life. It is important and helpful for families to think and talk about these choices before a crisis occurs. This process - of thinking, planning and talking - is called advance care planning. The Kansas LIFE project shares the following principles as a guide for all Kansans.

Principles of Advance Care Planning

For the first time in human history there are many choices about when, where, and how a person will die. These choices are the result of dramatic changes in medical science and technology. Some choices are complex and stressful for those who must make them. Frequently, the person involved is no longer able to choose and someone else must step in.

Most people die in hospitals or nursing homes. Very often, death is a result of a decision to stop or not to start a treatment or procedure. Usually, family members and friends work with doctors and nurses to decide what is best for the patient. In the past, we believed that all efforts to prolong life and restore function were good. Today, it is sometimes hard to know whether we are prolonging life, or just making the dying last longer. The decisions are important and sometimes very difficult, especially when not everyone involved can agree.

Advance care planning is a communication process through which we engage our family and friends, physicians, clergy and others in planning for future health care needs. The process involves thinking and talking about goals, values, religious preferences, and comfort issues with people who are important to us or who may be involved in decisions about our health care. Advance care planning is a good idea for people of all ages.

Principles of advance care planning

1. Advance planning reflects your wishes.

It …

• reflects your right to make your own choices and decisions;
• helps you develop a personal understanding about pain, artificial life support, hospitalization and other health care issues;
• allows you to deal with these hard questions in a time and place when you are comfortable and not feeling pressured;
• assures that your wishes for treatment will not be overlooked or neglected; and
• helps you tell your physician, family and friends about your goals, likes, dislikes, and choices.

2. Advance planning involves the people who are important in your life.

It …

• helps families know that they are following your wishes;
• helps physicians and the health care team provide care that matches your values and wishes; and
• identifies someone you trust to make decisions for you if a time comes when you are no longer able to make decisions for yourself.

3. Advance planning works for you.

You may …

• name someone you trust to make decisions for you when you are no longer able, by using a document called Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions;
  
  
• write other formal advance directives, called living wills or treatment directives, in which you give specific instructions about your wishes;
  
  
• make informal advance directives in which you clarify your preferences for end of life care;
  
  
• change your mind about what you want. You can change your advance directives if your health changes or if your ideas about health care change;
  
  
• continue making your own health care decisions as long as you are able;
  
  
• protect yourself from receiving treatments that you do not want; and
  
  
• protect the people who care for you.

  Click here to read or print the LIFE Project's publication "Advance Care Planning: Do It For Those You Love".

Please refer to these websites : Kansas Health Ethics and Midwest Bioethics Center for further information.

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