Connect: Put Your Plan into Action

Talk with your doctors & care providers to align the best possible care to your goals, values and choices. You can start a discussion with these simple questions or use the "5 Things to Talk About" discussion guides below.

"Here's how I'm feeling today"... to promote your everyday health
"What's ahead for me?"... to plan for future care, and
"Here are my goals for care — how can we get there?"... to match the best possible care to your choices.

"5 Things To Talk About ..." Discussion Guides

Consumers & Care Providers can have high-quality effective discussions

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

5 Things to Talk About is a series of handy health care planning discussion guides. Consumers and care providers can use these guides to start a discussion, and build on their discussions at every phase of health. Using the guides can make consumer-care providers discussions more effective and meaningful, and a routine part of every care provider visit.

Here's how it works:

Either a Consumer (adult, family member, agent, guardian) or a Doctor or Care Provider can start a planning discussion
The Consumer Guides and the Care Provider Guides mirror each other — they have the same topics and questions
The same topics and questions appear in all 4 guides to make it easy to pick up and build on your discussions
The guides are based on an adult's "5 Top Rights" for care planning
To start a discussion — Select a guide. Choose one question that's important to you from the discussion guide
Then build on your discussions — ask a few more questions — and make a plan of your care goals, values and care choices
Record your care goals in the medical record to review at your next visit

To Get Started: Download the Everyday Care Guide or any guide you like.

For Consumers: "5 Things To Talk About With Care Providers"

Here are 4 discussion guides:

For Care Providers: "5 Things To Talk About with Patients & Clients"

Here are 4 discussion guides:

Information & Tools:

What are my 5 Top Rights?

Honoring Choices has summarized a competent adult's 5 top legal & patient rights in health care planning as the:

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

These 5 top rights form the basis of the all the discussion guides and support an adult's right to direct your health care. Although there are many questions to talk about, the guides offer both the consumer and care provider a common place to start a discussion.

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 their respective perspective. Forming the essential 10-12 questions in each guide was a highly collaborative process. Hundreds of interdisciplinary care providers, from large health systems to community groups, consulted on the questions and added their expertise in working with patients and clients. The care providers worked together for many months, unifying and tailoring the questions to be universal to age, ability and culture, so that each question could be re-visited and re-defined as a patient or client's health needs changed over time. The Honoring Choices Alliance Partners and Community Partners formed the collaborative process to ensure the discussion guides could easily become a routine part of every consumer-care provider visit.

Why make a series of 4 disucssion guides?

The series of 4 discussion guides are built on the fundamental right of person-directed care and a competent adult's 5 top rights. The common foundation for the series is established in the Everyday Care Guide. We created a series to align with the three phases of health and added a Palliative Care Guide. The guides recognize the fact that health care changes and so can the planning needs of adults and families. Our interdisciplinary care providers created the guides to show how questions, concerns and decisions can change as an illness progresses and goals of care are revisited and redefined. Each discussion guide coordinates with the Honoring Choices Getting Started and Next Steps Tool Kits. The Health Care Planning Road Map illustrates how the 4 guides work together for high quality consumer-care provider discussions at every phase of your health care journey.

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

Everyone is different. You can start with the Everyday Care Guide no matter where you are on your health care journey. It's easy to use and provides the basic set of topics and questions. Remember, this is not a script, it's just a guide. Choose any topic & question that makes sense to you to start your discussion. Often consumers and care providers start with one question regarding what information is needed to understand one’s illness to make choices for care. You can start with one question or a few, then build on your discussions overtime. Consumers can bring the guide to their next appointment — or call ahead to make an appointment for an “advance care planning discussion.” Care providers are placing the index card version of the discussion guides in the waiting rooms. It is helping to make the discussion “known and routine” for each visit.