Planning Workbooks and Toolkits
While the end of life is inevitable, having a say in how you spend your final days is a choice you can make today. Advance care planning is about making deliberate decisions about your end-of-life care now, documenting these choices, and sharing your decisions with your loved ones and healthcare providers. This process is crucial in ensuring that your healthcare preferences are respected, even if you become unable to communicate them yourself. As part of our commitment to empowering individuals with knowledge about end-of-life choice, we are happy to share a few comprehensive resources to facilitate your planning.
Workbooks: Compassion & Choices
“My End of Life Decisions”
Introducing the Advance Planning Guide from Compassion & Choices
We recognize that contemplating and discussing the end of life can be challenging for many. The process of setting up the necessary documents might appear overwhelming. To assist in this vital aspect of life planning, we are proud to share an invaluable resource developed by Compassion & Choices—The Advance Planning Guide & Toolkit.
This guide is designed to:
- Navigate you through considering your end-of-life care preferences.
- Document your preferences in an advance directive along with any other necessary forms.
- Select a healthcare proxy who can advocate on your behalf.
- Understand common medical interventions that happen towards the end of life.
By clarifying your desires, you can articulate clearly what you wish to embrace or avoid as your life draws to a close.
Workbooks: The Conversation Project
Introducing the “What Matters to Me” Workbook by The Conversation Project
The Conversation Project is dedicated to helping you and your family talk about your wishes for end-of-life care. Their “What Matters to Me” workbook is a thoughtful guide and toolset designed to facilitate deep reflection on your values, wishes, and preferences regarding end-of-life care. It encourages you to articulate what matters most to you and helps guide conversations with loved ones and healthcare providers.
The Conversation Project also offers a suite of resources aimed at sparking and supporting conversations about end-of-life care:
- Start a Conversation: Tips on initiating discussions about end-of-life care with your loved ones.
- Choose a Health Care Proxy: Guidance on selecting someone to speak for you if you can’t speak for yourself.
- Be a Health Care Proxy: Advice for those appointed as a healthcare proxy, on how to advocate effectively.
- Talk to My Health Care Team about My End of Life Care: Insights on communicating your end-of-life care preferences to healthcare providers.
- Talk about the Care I Want for My Serious Illness: Help in expressing care preferences in the context of a serious illness.
- Help the Person I Care for with Alzheimer’s or Dementia: Support for caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s or dementia.
- Talk with My Child Living with Serious Illness: Resources for discussing end-of-life care with children facing serious illnesses.
Workbooks: SAGE
LGBTQ+ Advance Care Planning Toolkit
This step-by-step guide is designed to help the LGBTQ+ community prepare for healthcare needs at the end of life. It’s produced by SAGE–Advocacy and Services for LGBTQ+ Elders, part of the National Resource Center on LGBTQ+ Aging. The center is the country’s first and only technical assistance resource center aimed at improving the quality of services and support offered to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender older adults.
