Article Sections

Introduction

Advance care planning (ACP) involves discussing a patient's beliefs about illness, death, and medical interventions to prepare for future decisions about care if the patient becomes ill and is unable to communicate their wishes (ie, incapacitated).  These conversations include the patient, their family, and the medical team, and they typically occur over the course of multiple visits and when there is a change in the patient's clinical status.  ACP can result in the formation of advance directives (ADs), which are legal documentation of the patient's preferences for future medical decisions.

Advance directives

ADs ( Table 1) (eg, living will, durable power of attorney for health care) are legal documents that outline how medical care decisions should be made on a patient's behalf.  ADs are enacted only if the patient does not possess decisional capacity (eg, the patient is in a coma).  Evaluation of decision-making capacity (

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Tables

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