ADVANCE DIRECTIVES
Advance directives are legal documents that allow you to make decisions about your end-of-life care ahead of time. This will let your wishes be known to family, friends and health care professionals and avoid confusion later.
In this document, you can choose to make decisions about life-sustaining procedures and name a health care agent.
More than one out of four older Americans face questions about medical treatment near the end of life but are not capable of making those decisions. Some decisions include the use of emergency treatments to keep you alive through CPR, ventilator use, tube feeding, intravenous fluids and comfort care, or hospice.
Source: National Institute on Aging
OTHER THINGS TO KNOW
- 70 percent of Americans have no advance care plan, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- A Critical Conditions Planning Guide can be downloaded for a small fee at GeorgiaHealthDecisions.org. The guide walks you through advance care planning and includes a Georgia advance directive form.
Chances are your next doctor’s visit could include another routine question: “Do you have an advance directive?”
You may not be thinking about end-of-life issues, but the push is on for all adults — and especially seniors — to make their health care wishes known well in advance.
“We’re trying to get people to normalize the conversation about end of life, to get family members to talk about this,” said David L. Williamson, ethics program coordinator with WellStar Health System.
An advance directive allows you to document your future health care plans in the event something happens and you can’t make those decisions when the time comes. Anyone 18 years and older can prepare an advance directive. It tells your health care team what type of medical interventions and care you want and what you don’t want.
Research shows that most people want different types of care than what they receive, and most don’t want aggressive treatments at the end of life, Williamson said.
“Most people prefer to die at home, but the reality is that most people die in an ICU or a nursing home,” he said.
Research from the National Institute on Aging found that people who document their health care preferences are more likely to get the care they prefer at the end of life than people who do not.
An advance directive is easy to prepare, and you don’t need an attorney to complete one or make it official. Georgia forms can be found free online, or you can request one from your physician’s office.
The document becomes legally binding when it is signed by two witnesses. You do not have to sign the document in the presence of either witness.
The living document is also easy to alter. If later you change your mind about what end-of-life care you’d prefer, get rid of that document and fill out a new one. Most states honor advance directives from other states, but if you move, it’s better to fill out a new one using that state’s form.
An ideal situation is to fill out an advance directive, have a conversation with your family about your desires and give copies to all your physicians, Williamson said.
The nonprofit Georgia Health Decisions publishes a Critical Conditions Planning Guide that takes you through conversation starters, explains various medical procedures and includes a Georgia advance directive form. The guides are online for a small fee, and are given away free at most Georgia hospitals and at many doctor’s offices.
“It’s designed so you can sit around the kitchen table and talk about these things,” said Critical Conditions program coordinator Lynne M. Kernaghan.
Statistics show that only 18 percent to 35 percent of the adult population have an advance directive. Broken out, statistics are not much different for those 65 and older, Williamson said.
“People don’t naturally want to discuss end-of-life care,” Kernaghan said.
The consequence of such reluctance is all too often played out in emergency room conversations where family members struggle to come to an agreement on what their loved one would want.
“We’re going to be hearing a lot more about (advance directives), especially as our boomers are starting to age,” Williamson said. “The point is to have these conversations now, and not wait until a crisis happens.”
