Advance Care Planning

Guiding You Through Advance Care Planning

At MJHS, we understand that sometimes illness or injury may prevent you from directly communicating your treatment preferences to your family and doctor.

That’s why we are here to support and guide you through the planning process to ensure your wishes are respected if you can not make them for yourself.

Advance Directives: Your Voice When You Can’t Speak

Completing Advance Directives lets you clearly outline your wishes for medical care and ensure they are followed. This important step helps ensure clarity and certainty about the care you want or don’t want and need and removes the burden from your family of having to make difficult decisions.

In New York State, one of the most effective ways to protect your treatment preferences is to designate a trusted individual to make health care decisions on your behalf. This individual—often referred to as a health care proxy—can step in and make decisions in line with your desires if you can no longer communicate them.

Advance Directives, such as a Health Care Proxy and Living Will, are crucial written documents that help you communicate your medical care preferences in case of physical or mental incapacity due to an accident or illness. These documents empower you to participate in your healthcare decision-making process.

Our team is here to assist you in completing your Advance Directives and to guide you in choosing the right person to act on your behalf, ensuring your preferences and values are safeguarded.

You don’t have to navigate this process alone; we are here to help you every step of the way. Some important decisions you should think about include:

• Decision-making about Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) – Your right to decide about treatment extends to CPR, an emergency procedure to restart the heart and lungs when breathing or circulation ceases. In some cases, often in consultation with your doctor, you may decide in advance that CPR should not be administered in the event your heart or breathing stops. In this case, you should sign a DNR order.
• Decision-making about Do Not Intubate (DNI) – The decision about whether to be intubated is another medical intervention that you have the right to decide whether you do or do not want to receive. If you experience breathing difficulties or respiratory arrest and do not want a breathing tube inserted down your throat, you should also sign a DNI; the DNI order, often paired with the DNR order, specifies that artificial breathing support will not be initiated.