Documents
Virginia Advance Directive for Health Care (Short Form)
An advance directive allows you to state your choices for health care or to name someone to make those choices for you if you become unable to make decisions about your medical treatment. It enables you to say “yes” to treatment you want or “no” to treatment you do not want.
What Happens When We Can’t Make Medical Decisions for Ourselves
How to Start a Conversation about End-of-life Care
The Conversation Project has great tools in English, Spanish, and Chinese to help you begin the conversation about your or your loved ones wishes for end-of-life-care.
Conversation Guide for Caregivers of People with Alzheimer’s Or Other Forms of Dementia
What Matters to Me: A Guide to Serious Illness Conversations
Honoring Choices Virginia
Along with individualized appointments for advance care planning, Honoring Choices Virginia offers an assortment of advance care planning materials on their website including:
A guide to help you start thinking about advance care planning
A preparation guide when you are getting ready to create or update your advance care plan
A checklist to review once you have completed your advance care plan
Books & Articles
Sign These Papers: 5 estate planning documents that Suze Orman recommends for every family
At this stage of your life, preparing these must-have documents is one of the most profound acts of love you can bestow. This paperwork can shield your family from needless heartache, hassle and expense. The documents will give you and your family. Read more…
Recommended Read: Hard Choices for Loving People, by Hank Dunn
The CVADC recommends these books by author and speaker Hank Dunn, MDiv, an ordained healthcare chaplain who is dedicated to providing compassionate, informed advice about healthcare decision making. His books, Hard Choices for Loving People and Light in the Shadows, have sold over 3.8 million copies. Request a copy from James-Madison Regional Library in English or Spanish or order here.
Do You Want to Die in an I.C.U.? Pandemic Makes Question All Too Real
Sobering statistics for older patients sharpen the need to draw up advanced directives for treatment and share them with their families. Read more…
How to prepare yourself for a good end of life
My parents lived good lives and expected to die good deaths. They exercised daily, ate plenty of fruits and vegetables, and kept, in their well-organized files, boilerplate advance health directives. But when he was 79, my beloved and seemingly vigorous father came up from his basement study, put on the kettle for tea, and had a devastating stroke. Read more…
Dear Loved Ones: Trim My Chin and Upper Lip Hairs!
This supplementary letter to my Advanced Healthcare Directive (AHD) is to ensure that my wishes will, to the utmost extent possible, be honored as it pertains to my long-term healthcare.
I hope that I’ve been clear over the years in talking (ad nauseam) to family and friends about my personal convictions. The instructions in my AHD are well-defined enough I hope. Read more…
Central Virginia Advanced Directives Collaborative 