Advance care planning

Advance care planning is the process of discussing and documenting a person’s values and preferences for future health care, including decisions made if they cannot speak for themselves.

Advance directive: A legal document recording a person's instructions about future medical care or naming someone to decide for them. It is one common way to document preferences established through planning.
Values clarification: A process of identifying and prioritizing the beliefs and outcomes that matter to a person. It helps make future-care preferences coherent rather than a list of isolated procedures.
Serious illness conversation: A structured discussion of a seriously ill person's understanding, values, worries, and priorities for care. It applies planning directly to the decisions and uncertainties of serious illness.
Do not resuscitate order: A medical order directing clinicians not to attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation if a person's heart or breathing stops. It covers resuscitation specifically, unlike broader planning about future health care.
Advance directive law: The laws governing the creation, validity, interpretation, and use of advance directives. Legal requirements and effects vary across jurisdictions, shaping what planning documents can accomplish.
Health care proxy: A person legally appointed to make health care decisions for someone who lacks decision-making capacity. This role carries a person's preferences into decisions they cannot make themselves.
Shared decision-making: A clinical process in which patients and clinicians combine medical evidence with the patient's preferences to choose care. It connects planning conversations with choices made during illness.
Palliative care: Specialized care that relieves suffering and supports quality of life alongside treatment for serious illness. Palliative clinicians often help patients discuss priorities and plan future care.
Living will: A written advance directive specifying medical treatment preferences for circumstances in which a person cannot decide. It is a document produced through planning, not the entire ongoing process.
Patient Self-Determination Act: A 1990 United States federal law requiring many health care institutions to inform patients about state-law rights concerning advance directives. It illustrates how institutions are required to support awareness without guaranteeing completed planning.

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