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Congratulations on taking the first step toward ensuring your healthcare decisions are known.

An advance directive helps ensure your healthcare decisions are known if you're ever unable to make or communicate your own healthcare decisions. It involves:

1. Thinking and talking about what matters to you.

2. Choosing a healthcare agent—someone you trust to make healthcare decisions on your behalf if you're unable to do so.

3. Making decisions about future end-of-life medical treatments.

Creating an advance directive isn't about expecting the worst. It's about being prepared. Just as you buy insurance before you need it or wear a seatbelt before an accident, completing an advance directive helps prepare you and the people you care about for unexpected situations.

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What’s Included in Your Advance Directive

Your MyDirectives Advance Directive includes two important parts:

Power of Attorney for Healthcare – Names the person you choose as your healthcare agent who can make healthcare decisions for you if you're ever unable to make or communicate those decisions.
Living Will – Documents your choices for CPR and life-support treatments.

Together, these documents help ensure your decisions are known and that someone you trust can make healthcare decisions on your behalf if needed.

Understanding Advance Directives and Medical Orders

As you learn about advance care planning, you may also hear about documents such as POLST or Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders. While these are important documents, they serve a different purpose than an advance directive.

Most adults only need to complete an advance directive.

An advance directive helps ensure your decisions are known and that someone you trust can make healthcare decisions on your behalf if needed. Other documents, such as a POLST or DNR, are intended for specific medical situations and are completed with a healthcare clinician.

Explore these document types to understand the purpose and who should have them.

Which Documents Do I Need?

For most people, the answer is simple:

Start with an advance directive, which includes your choice of a healthcare agent and a living will.
If you're a healthy adult or living with a stable chronic condition, completing your advance directive is the most important step you can take today.
If you later develop a serious illness or become medically frail, your healthcare provider may recommend additional medical orders, such as a POLST or DNR. Those documents are completed with a healthcare clinician and don't replace your advance directive—they work alongside it. Your advance directive identifies your healthcare agent and documents your decisions in your own words, while medical orders provide treatment instructions for healthcare professionals and emergency responders.

Which Documents Do I Need for an advance directive?

What You'll Accomplish

As you work through the MyDirectives Advance Directive, you'll:

Reflect on what matters most to you and what quality of life means to you.
Choose a healthcare agent who can communicate your decisions if you're unable to do so.
Document your future end-of-life treatment choices in a living will.
Share your advance directive with your healthcare agent, loved ones, and healthcare providers.

Together, these documents help ensure your decisions are known and that someone you trust can speak on your behalf if needed.

Before You Begin

You don't need to have every answer today.

Completing an advance directive often starts conversations you may have never had before. As you move through each step, you may find yourself reflecting on past experiences, talking with family or friends, or reconsidering what's most important to you. That's a normal—and valuable—part of the process.

You can complete your advance directive at your own pace, save your progress, and return whenever you're ready.

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A Few Things to Remember

There are no right or wrong answers—only the answers that reflect your values and wishes.
Your advance directive can be updated whenever your life, health, or preferences change.
The goal isn't to plan for every possible medical situation. It's to provide the guidance your healthcare agent, loved ones, and healthcare team may need to honor your wishes.

Continue to: What Matters Most

Ready to make your healthcare decisions known?

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Create an advance directive or securely store and manage advance care planning documents you already have.

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