Advance Care Planning and Serious Illness Resources
Advance care planning simply means making choices now regarding your
future medical treatment. Many patients, their families, and loved ones
find peace of mind and assurance knowing their wishes will be honored in
the event of a medical crisis. Our vision is that everyone will receive
care that honors personal values and goals at the end-of-life.
Advance Directives
To help you with your advance care planning, the WSMA offers an advance
directive-a voluntary, legal way to write down your advance care planning
decisions. All adults 18 and older can complete an advance directive.
Learn more about the
WSMA advance directive.
POLST
If you are seriously ill or in very poor health, a physician, physician
assistant, or advance registered nurse practitioner can use the Portable
Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment to represent your wishes for future
care as clear and specific medical orders, indicating what types of
life-sustaining treatment you want or do not want in the case of a medical
emergency. Learn more about
POLST.
Other Clinical and Professional Resources
Many of the advance care planning and serious illness resources formerly
available through Honoring Choices Pacific Northwest can now be found
through the Washington State Hospital Association. Visit the Washington
State Hospital Association's
Advance Care Planning and Serious Illness Resources
webpages for additional advance care planning resources, including:
-
Serious Illness Conversation Guide - Ariadne Labs
developed the Serious Illness Conversation Guide to help clinicians from
diverse professional backgrounds have more, better, and earlier
conversations with their patients about their goals, values, and
priorities that inform their future care. Learn more about the
Serious Illness Conversation Guide.
-
Serious Illness Conversation Guide Trainings - The WSMA
and the Washington State Hospital Association together have trained over
70 teachers to teach the Serious Illness Conversation Guide across the
Pacific Northwest.
Learn more about future regional SICG courses.
-
Designing an Advance Care Planning Program in Your Organizations - Self-guided tools to design and implement new ACP projects within your
organization's existing ACP program.
Learn more.