estate and end of life planning checklist

These questions can help you narrow your choices : If you like the idea of spending your final days at home, you’ll need to choose an appropriate hospice care as well.

What are the policies for admission, visitation, and discharge?.

What types of activities are available?.

How are treatment plans determined? Do the patients continue seeing their own doctors?.

What are the costs of care and how are these billed?.What types of care does the facility provide?.Is the facility Medicaid- or Medicare-certified?.You can and should research hospitals and nursing homes while you are healthy. 1.3 Use of nursing homes, hospitals, or hospiceĪnother decision to consider is the use of nursing homes, hospitals, or hospice care when your condition is terminal. The physician then notifies hospital staff by placing a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order and/or a do-not-intubate (DNI) order on your chart. If you do not want CPR or other life support treatments, you’d document that in your advance care directive, tell your health care proxy, and inform your physician when you are admitted to the hospital. CPR can include mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, use of a defibrillator to restart the heart via electric shock, or breathing tubes. Resuscitation refers to the CPR treatment protocol that’s used when your heart or breathing stops. You may have heard it called a “heart-lung machine.” It’s only used following severe injury, such as heart or respiratory failure. ECMO, or extracorporeal life support (ECLS), provides cardiac and respiratory support for the body. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).Artificial nutrition, also called tube feeding, may be combined with a respirator to deliver nutrition to the body when an individual is unconscious. The underlying cause might be a lung condition like COPD or edema, a chronic health condition like Lou Gehrig’s disease, or a spinal cord injury. A ventilator, or respirator, is used when the lungs aren’t functional on their own. There are several types of life support to consider, including:

This helps your family and your care team approach the situation appropriately. If the patient has no documented preferences on life support, the decision to keep the ventilator on or turn it off resides with the family.ĭeter that situation by stating your life support preferences ahead of time. An individual who’s in an extended state of unconsciousness, for example, could be kept alive by a ventilator. Life support tactics become controversial, however, when they’re applied to someone who’s experiencing long-term health problems, from which recovery is unlikely. Doctors might put you on life support temporarily for an invasive surgery or to relieve symptoms of severe lung conditions like pneumonia or COVID-19. Life support encompasses a broad category of machines, medications, and treatments that keep the body functional through injury and illness. All of these are the same thing - a legal document that states your preferences for end-of-life care and handling, including life support, resuscitation, hospitalization, and organ donation. You’d do that by specifying your care choices now in an advance care directive, which is also known as a living will, advance directive, personal directive, or medical directive. This comprehensive guide walks you through end-of-life discussion points on all five topics, with an in-depth checklist for each to help develop your end-of-life plan.Įven if you become incapacitated, you can retain some control over your healthcare. To help you get your end-of-life affairs in order, we’ve created this guide with five checklists you should complete: The end-of-life plan is your time to establish your legacy and shoulder the burden of difficult decisions - so your loved ones won’t have to.

Estate and end of life planning checklist