National Healthcare Decisions Day is held annually in April. It was created to educate the public about the importance of planning for a medical crisis ahead of time and to encourage adults of all ages to put their wishes in writing by creating an advanced healthcare directive.
An advanced healthcare directive allows you to share what matters most to you with the people who matter most to you. If you don’t have such a directive, the people closest to you may be forced to make difficult decisions about your care in an emergency without knowing what you would have wanted. This can lead to infighting among the people who matter most to you and make an already stressful situation even worse for everyone involved.
To commemorate National Healthcare Decisions Day, I, along with Patricia Nihill of North River Home Care, are presenting a free educational workshop. It will take place at the Duxbury Senior Center on Thursday, April 14th at 10 AM. I’ll be talking about a crucial legal document called a Health Care Proxy, which grants authority to a person you trust (your “agent”) to make healthcare decisions for you when you cannot make or communicate them yourself.
The only way to help ensure your agent will make decisions that reflect what matters most to you is to share your thoughts and opinions with your agent now, while you are still able. To facilitate this, my firm provides every client with a copy of the Your Way workbook at their signing. Another good vehicle for sharing what matters most to you is the Conversation Project.
I look forward to seeing you on April 14th. To register, call the Duxbury Senior Center at 781-934-5774.
Until next time, take care….
Alexis