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Five Wishes is a legal form from an American non-profit organization that helps people prepare an advance medical directive for end-of-life care. It covers five sections, including designating a health care attorney and discussing comfort care, personal wishes, and spiritual matters. It serves as a living will and health care power of attorney, but people should check if their state recognizes it. It is important to be specific about end-of-life care preferences to ensure healthcare professionals comply with the patient’s wishes.
Five Wishes is a legal form issued by an American non-profit organization to help people prepare an advance medical directive addressing what should happen if they fall ill and are no longer able to make decisions for themselves. The Aging With Dignity organization introduced the first version in 1996 and made several changes to the form to make it usable in as many states as possible as a binding legal document. People can get copies from this organization or through hospitals, hospice organizations, and similar groups.
This document contains five sections covering various aspects of end-of-life care. The first is the designation of a person to act as a health care attorney in the event of incapacity. The second discusses the type of care the person wishes to receive, ranging from minimal comfort care to all possible life-saving measures. Both of these parts of the Five Wishes document are legally binding and it is important to ensure that the form is recognized in a given jurisdiction.
The next three sections deal with spiritual and personal matters. The third section addresses the patient’s comfort needs by discussing the type of comfort care they wish to receive. The fourth is about how the patient wants to be treated by other people and the fifth discusses things the patient wants friends and family to know. These can include details for a funeral or memorial along with personal notes for individual people.
The Five Wishes document serves as a living will detailing a patient’s wishes about specific aspects of medical care, as well as giving a person a health care power of attorney to make decisions. It also covers matters not normally discussed in the standard legal forms people use for advance directives. When people use a Five Wishes form, they should check if their state recognizes the form. If not, they must use the state’s preferred legal document, although they can also prepare a Five Wishes to supplement it.
It is important to be aware that hospitals use a variety of terminology to discuss various aspects of end of life care and it is important to be as specific as possible. Rather than just saying “no extraordinary measures,” for example, people should explain what that means. A person may be willing to take antibiotics to treat an infection, but not to use a ventilator, for example. The more detailed the document, the better able healthcare professionals will be to comply with the patient’s wishes.
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