Health Care Decisions Month: Lead by Example and Encourage Your Staff to Do the Same

SCHCDM

Feb 25

When it comes to advance care planning, we believe in leading by example.

This means first conducting your own advance care planning and encouraging those around you—whether friends, family or colleagues to do the same. This process starts as we think about our individual goals of care preferences, talk about our preferences with loved ones, and write our preferences in an advance directive.

If we have already completed an advance directive we are encouraged to periodically review and update the documents, if necessary, to ensure that our health care preferences still align with what has been expressed to those who matter to us and documented in an advance directive.

Although advance directives are important, they are no substitute for clarifying conversations.

That’s why we are declaring all of April as South Carolina Health Care Decisions Month.

We have issued a call-to-action to encourage others, including health care professionals, to express their goals of care and for their health care providers and facilities to develop supportive processes to ensure every person’s health care is in accordance with their goals, values and preferences—at all stages of life, in all steps of their care.

View the S.C. Health Care Decisions Month Toolkit

We can’t plan for everything, but we can help manage life’s unknowns by talking openly about what matters and what we’d want most if we become seriously ill. Conversations about things we can’t control can actually help give us a sense of control.

A good day tomorrow starts with a good talk today. If you became seriously ill, would the people who matter most really know what matters most to you? Share the kind of care that’s right for you, and what your good days look like—no matter what happens tomorrow.

My Life My Choices provides tools to help South Carolinians understand that making future health care decisions includes much more than deciding what care they would or would not want. It starts with thinking about preferences and clarifying values, talking about care preferences with loved ones and writing down those preferences in an advance directive that you share with your loved ones and your doctors.

Join us this April for South Carolina Health Care Decisions Month by pledging to participate here.

Take the S.C. Health Care Decisions Month Pledge

Best Practice: Nurses Leading by Example

Nursing organizations throughout the country are promoting advance care planning through a campaign entitled #ISaidWhatIWant. This special initiative encourages all nurses to lead by example by establishing their own advance care plan.

Resource: Advance Care Planning Initiative - #ISaidWhatIWant

View Toolkit

Take Pledge