FIVE WISHES

 

Five Wishes is a widely used advance care planning resource developed by Aging with Dignity, a privately-funded, non-profit organization which advocates for the elderly and those who care for them.  The Five Wishes document is recognized as a legal advance directive document in all but 13 states.

This reader-friendly document is structured to encourage the user to think about their health, personal, emotional and spiritual beliefs and desires, and to discuss them with loved ones and physicians.  As the user works through the document, he or she is asked to think about situations which commonly arise at the end of life.

Questions fall into these categories:

• “The person I want to make care decisions for me when I can’t.”
• “The kind of medical treatment I want or don’t want.”
• “How comfortable I want to be.”
• “How I want people to treat me.”
• “What I want my loved ones to know.”

 

Five Wishes was introduced and originally distributed through a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

For more information, go to the Aging with Dignity web site www.agingwithdignity.org.  Five Wishes can be downloaded from this site for a fee.

Please Note: Dani’s Foundation cannot be held responsible for information from other sources.