For rapid access of your forms and videos—by smartphones, tablets, or computers—store them online in our national registry, MyLastWishes.org Program.
Critical information can be retrieved when needed by emergency medical personnel and physicians. They can rapidly learn your end–of–life wishes.
You have several options:
- Keep a laminated MyLastWishes.org business-sized card (as illustrated above) in your wallet or purse.
- Wear a MyLastWishes.org plastic pouch as a pendant.
- Paste 2-D barcode stickers on driver's licenses, other cards, other documents, or on your refrigerator door.
Once accessed, the registry provides treating physicians and other authorized people with:
- A short video of your urgent treatment preferences (CPR versus DNR, etc.);
- Readable displays of all your completed forms (POLST, Living Will, etc.);
- Ability to print, download, email and fax any document to clinicians who need this information so they can provide you the treatment that you want.
- Videos that recorded you stating what treatment you wanted and explaining why—may convince everyone what treatment you really wanted—and thus eliminate potential conflicts.
Register at MyLastWishes.org
How MyLastWishes.org Program works: You can enter your important information yourself online, or you can call a Caring Advocates staff person who can take your information over the phone and enter it for you. Call 800 64 PEACE
(800 647 3223). You can also send Caring Advocates all the forms you want stored for rapid, future retrieval. You can record your videos yourself, or you can have an interview with one of Caring Advocates' Planning Professionals over the Internet. All you need is a webcam. Caring Advocates can try to locate a physician in your state, to verify that you gave your informed consent.
In the mail, you will receive two-dimensional barcodes in several sizes that you can paste on your Living Will, wallet card, driver’s license, and that clinicians can place on your medical chart, DNR Order or POLST, and similar forms. You can put the larger barcodes on the door of your refrigerator, your bedpost, your computer monitor, and your TV.
Interview By Internet - Audio and Video Recordings
Goal: The ultimate goal of Interview by Internet is to assure patients and families that their final wishes will be honored so their transitions will be as peaceful as possible. Creating effective Advance Directives, including Living Wills and Durable Powers of Attorney is very important, but these documents cannot always be found in an emergency, and sometimes they are not as clear as they need to be when the time comes to make final choices. For these reasons, Caring Advocates offers to record patient’s Interview by Internet via audio and/or video and to send patients’ physicians the Natural Dying Physician’s Orders. This is a first of its kind comprehensive service for Advance Care Planning.
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- For patients, Interview by Internet offers an inexpensive, convenient way to explore and record and/or video their values and preferences. Patients need not even leave the comfort of their residence. This optional service can be purchased as a separate "consultation" service. This service is also provided to patient's based on need and fees can be adjusted on their ability to pay.
- For Proxies/Surrogates/Agents, Interview by Internet can increase their awareness that end–of–life decisions can be complicated while it broadens their range of choices. Often, physicians ask a patient’s loved ones to make a life–or–death determining decision when these surrogates have little or no specific prior experience, training, or knowledge. Interview by Internet provides people with an opportunity to explore some typical challenging situations with a Planning Professional who has extensive experience in this area.
- For Planning Professionals, Interview by Internet provides a means to learn their patients’ end–of–life preferences. It also provides a means to assess and document whether or not their patients possess the mental ability to make sound medical decisions. Determining competence can be critically important for patients in the early stages of dementia who want assurance that their end–of–life decisions will be honored by others in the future. In the absence of assurance, patients who fear they will suffer greatly or be a burden to their families sometimes opt to end their lives prematurely or violently. Not knowing what legal options are available to avoid an unnecessarily prolonged dying may lead some loving spouses to commit the crime of mercy killing after which they suffer life–long guilt and painful memories. A few have even been imprisoned. Knowledge from Interview by Internet may help prevent such tragedies. On a wider scale, its goal is to honor patients’ choices for end–of–life interventions.
How: During the interview, a Caring Advocates Planning Professional explains the clinical points of a challenging case while the screen displays a summary of its main features. The recording captures the patient’s voice and face as the Planning Professional and patient discuss the patient’s reasons for choosing or not choosing one of the several options presented. To memorialize the patients’ end–of–life treatment preferences, Caring Advocates staff will burn a DVD and send it the patient who can then attach it to his/her Advance Directive as a legal exhibit. After further discussion about the patient’s final end–of–life choices, the patient can ask the Planning Professional to send their personal physician a document that summarizes these choices. Once signed by their physician, this form will likely be accepted in all treatment settings. Called the Natural Dying Physician’s Orders to Permit Natural Dying, this form incorporates safeguards that err on the side of life; yet it also informs patients about the most aggressive methods of Comfort Care and the most peaceful ways to avoid prolonging the process of dying.
