5 Things to Talk About

Conversation Guide Series for Consumers and Care Providers

Handy guides to have effective planning conversations from simple to serious illness.

Graphic shows different phases of health: Wellness, Chronic Illness and Serious Advancing Illness

The "5 Things to Talk About" series offers both consumers and care providers an easy place to start to have a simple care planning conversation to stay well, and build on your conversations to manage health needs and chronic illness, and live well with serious illness.

The Consumer Conversation Guides 1-4 mirror the same topics and sample questions in Care Provider Conversation Guides 1-4 for more effective conversations. Each handy one-page guide has 5 topics to explore with suggested sample questions. The 5 topics stay the same over the conversation guide series, while the sample questions deepen to reflect on changing health needs and care preferences.

To Get Started:

Select either the Consumer or Care Provider Conversation Guides below;
Begin with Guide 1: Start a Simple Conversation to Stay Well, or anywhere that's right for you.

Consumer Conversation Guides 1-4

5 Things to Talk About with Your Care Providers

Guide 1: Start a Simple Conversation to Stay Well

Guide 2: Managing Health and Chronic Illness

Guide 3: Living Well with Serious Illness

Guide 4: Let's Talk about Palliative Care

Care Provider Conversation Guides 1-4

5 Things to Talk About with Your Patients and Clients

Guide 1: Start a Simple Conversation to Stay Well

Guide 2: Managing Health and Chronic Illness

Guide 3: Living Well with Serious Illness

Guide 4: Let's Talk about Palliative Care

Information & Tools:

What are an adult's 5 Top Rights in Health Care Planning ?

The "5 Things to Talk About" conversation guide series offers both the consumers and care providers a common place to start a planning discussion. The conversation guide's topics and sample questions are designed around the 5 top rights in health care planning-

Right to information to make informed care choices;
Right to direct your care decisions, and to accept and refuse medical treatments;
Right to make a personal health care plan and write down your choices for care;
Right to have your choices known; to communicate, update, revise & record your choices in the medical record;
Right to have your choices honored, and align quality care to your care goals, values and choices.

How were the topics & questions selected?

Our goal is to bring together a common language and set of terms so either a consumer or care provider can start a planning discussion. There is a consumer guide and a care provider guide — same topics and questions just from different perspectives. Forming the essential questions in each guide was a highly collaborative process. Hundreds of interdisciplinary care providers and consumer health advocacy and community groups consulted on the topics and sample questions to help ensure the guides could easily become a routine part of every consumer-care provider visit.

Where do I start? How do I use the discussion guides?

Consumers can start with the Conversation Guide 1: Start a Simple Conversation to Stay Well no matter where you are on your health care journey. You can download the free heady one page guide. It's easy to use and provides the basic set of topics and sample questions. Remember, this is not a script, it's just a guide. Choose any topic and a few questions that make sense to you to start your conversation. Consumers can write in their own questions and bring the guide to their next doctor/ care provider appointment — or call ahead to make an appointment,