5 Wishes

The Five Wishes document helps you express how you want to be treated if you are seriously ill and unable to speak for yourself. It is unique among all other living will and health agent forms because it looks to all of a person's needs: medical, personal, emotional and spiritual. Five Wishes also encourages discussing your wishes with your family and physician.

Five Wishes lets your family and doctors know:

1. Which person you want to make health care decisions for you when you can't make them.
2. The kind of medical treatment you want or don't want.
3. How comfortable you want to be.
4. How you want people to treat you.
5. What you want your loved ones to know.

Five Wishes is changing the way America talks about and plans for care at the end of life. Nearly FOUR MILLION COPIES of the document are circulating throughout the nation. In addition, more than 7,000 ORGANIZATIONS are distributing this revolutionary document, including churches, synagogues, hospices, hospitals, doctor and law offices, and social service agencies. Many employers are providing Five Wishes to their employees, to help them plan for themselves and have those delicate discussions with their aging parents.

The document speaks to people in their own language, not in "doctor speak" or "lawyer talk." It can be used in the living room instead of the emergency room. And it helps families talk with their physician about a subject that before was too hard to face.

There are a few states in which Five Wishes does not yet meet the legal requirements. These states either require a specific state form or that the person completing an advance directive be read a mandatory notice or "warning." Residents of these states can still use Five Wishes to put their wishes in writing and communicate their wishes with their family and physician. Most health care professionals understand they have a duty to listen to the wishes of their patients no matter how they are expressed.

Five Wishes was introduced and originally distributed with support from a generous grant by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care.

5 Wishes can be provided by your Hospice of Saint John Medical Social Worker or at www.agingwithdignity.org/5wishes