Vitally Important: Make Your Advance Directive Easy to Find

Keep your copy of your Advance Directive in a consistent and visible place where you live. one people like to keep it in a plastic sleeve attached to the front of their refrigerator or in a binder on top of the refrigerator. Some like to keep it in a plastic sleeve attached to the inside of a kitchen cabinet or closet door. Make it readily available.

Let everyone involved in your care know where you store your directive at home.

Keep a copy in the glove compartment of your car. This won’t insure that it will be found in an auto accident situation, but it may help to have this additional copy.

Emergency Room Visit?

Call Your Agent & Take Your Advance Directive With You

Let your Agent know immediately if you have to go to an emergency room or are admitted to the hospital. Always take a copy of your Advance Directive with you.

In Your Wallet or Purse

In an emergency situation where you are unconscious keeping a card with essential facts and contacts lets emergency personnel know that you have a designated health care Agent and where they can be reached; that you have an Advance Directive or POLST form etc.

Keep a List of Everyone Who Has a Copy

Maintain a list of everyone who has a copy of your Advance Directive. Tell them where you store your personal copy. Give a copy of this list to everyone who has a copy of your directive.

Electronic scanning into your medical records
Online registry service
Your Agent
Your loved ones
Primary care physician

…and to these people as needed:

Palliative care service or Hospice service
Director and key personnel of a residential, assisted living, skilled nursing, or private care facility.
Home-care manager

STORE Your Advance Directive Electronically and Online

A safe deposit box at a bank is NOT a good place to keep your Advance Directive documents as it is difficult to access in an emergency, just when you need it most.

A copy of any of your Advance Directive and any attached addendum may be stored online so that they can be accessed immediately 24/7 by your physician(s) and care professionals in a hospital etc.

There are a number of companies that provide this service for a fee. You set up an account with a password then upload your Advance Directive and any other pertinent documents. You can access your account to update it. Medical professionals and hospitals can automatically access your valuable information 24 hours a day, every day. Let everyone know that you store your Advance Directive in one of these online registries and consider giving your password to your account on the registry to your medical Agent.

States vary in the companies that are certified to provide such services. Here are two services that are generally regarded as providing very reliable services. Please check with your state health department to be certain that they are valid in your state.

MedicAlert Foundation
Visit Website

US Living Will Registry
Visit Website

RECORD Yourself Talking with Your Loved Ones

– There’s an App for that!

Here is an inventive way to add weight to statements of your end of life wishes to enhance but not replace an Advance Directive. Make a recording. This method can help convince a doubting family member or care provider that you meant what you said about your end of life care choices. Record a conversation of you and your loved ones talking about the values you have for your end of life care and the choices you have made. Story Corps and the Conversation Project have teamed up to create a way for you to do that. Always re-record later if you change your choices and preferences for care.

Visit Website

Create a Personal Values Video on Your Smartphone

Another way to add weight to enhance but not to replace an Advance Directive is to have a friend or relative take a simple video of you talking to your Agent or loved one about your choices. Just like the recording above, hearing you say your choices and preferences in-person helps convince many doubtful person about your intentions.

Select the Camera function
Select Video and tart talking about your choices while someone records for you.
The Story Corp link above provides a suggested script for such conversations as a starting point.
When finished with the video, store it in your Photos section on your phone in an Album title End of Life Care.
If you know how to transfer the video to your computer you can do that as well.
Let your family know that it is on your phone and where they can find it if it is need to convince anyone in the future.
Let our Agent know as well.
Always re-record later if you change your choices and preferences for care.

REVIEW Directives Periodically – REVISE as Needed

You may find that you change your mind about the choices and preferences you made about what makes life meaningful for you or have different thoughts about your medical treatment preferences. If you develop a serious illness it si a good time to think through your choices again, discussing them with your doctor(s) and care providers to see what is appropriate at that time.

Other times to review and update your Advance Directive are: the death of a spouse, partner, if your Agent moves away, your file for separation or divorce or it has been more than three years since you created the documents.

Some folks suggest you use your birthday to look at your Advance Directive each year – or at least be sure it is still located where you have told everyone where to find it.

If you change your Advance Directive or an addendum, BE CONSISTENT: check again to see that the specific medical and personal preferences you make are the same in all documents.

REVISE and REPLACE

Anytime you make ANY changes to your Advance Directive or any Addendum to your directive, you MUST create a new directive, sign, date it, and have it witnessed again.

Discuss the changes with your doctor. Ask her/him to electronically scan the new version into your medical records and remove the old.

You may completely revoke any advance directive at any time by writing, signing, dating a letter stating that you are revoking a specifically directive. Mail it to your Agent, doctor, family, hospital facility or provider who has a copy of your previous directive.

NOTE: In most states, if you want to remove one or more provisions of your Advance Directive but leave the rest as it is, you can draw a line through the lines of the section you want to remove, then initial and date that section. THEN you MUST re-sign, date and properly witness the entire Advance Directive and any attached addendum again. The date next to any lined-out and initialed sections need to match the date the whole directive is re-signed.

THROW OUT all the old versions of your directive and any addendum.

UPLOAD new version if you have stored our documents with an online registry service.

GIVE A COPY of the new version to everyone on your list. Tell them to throw out their old copy.

REVOKE the Entire Advance Directive

Circumstances in your life may change and you may need to completely revoke a directive and start anew. To completely revoke your entire Advance Directive and/or any addendum to it: Tell your primary care doctor (in person) that you are revoking your entire directive. Then follow-up with a written, signed, dated and mailed letter to your primary care doctor.

Mail a copy of your the letter to everyone who has a copy of your directive. Ask them to destroy the Advance Directive you had given to them. Remove your directive from any online registry service.

Previous: Share

Advance Care Planning Main Page

Next: Peace & Grace