Advance care planning

Advance care planning is a process that enables individuals with decisional mental capacity to make plans about their future health care. Advance care plans provide direction to healthcare professionals when a person is not in a position to make and/or communicate their own healthcare choices. Advance care planning is applicable to adults at all stages of life.

Participation in advance care planning has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety for patients and their families, and lead to improvements in end of life care. Older adults are more directly concerned as they may experience a situation where advance care planning can be useful. However, only a small portion of elderly use them.

The main components of advance care planning include the nomination of a substitute decision maker, and the completion of an advance care directive.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.