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Advance Care Planning & Directives
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Service Overview
Advance care planning is how you share your values, wishes and beliefs about the care you want to receive if you become terribly sick. Writing down what matters to you on a legal document and sharing it with family, friends and your healthcare team provides them peace of mind that they will make the right decision for you.
At Hawaiʻi Pacific Health, our team can help you make the decisions that are right for you.
Patient Resources
Creating Your Advanced Care Plan
Creating your advanced care plan takes four steps:
- Know your options: Speak with your provider, or sign up for an advance care planning class and invite your family to attend with you.
- Think about what you want: Some questions to consider when creating your advance care plan include:
- Who would you choose and trust to speak for you about your health choices if you were unable to speak?
- Does this person know what kind of care you want or do not want if you have a serious illness?
- What care would you like to receive when you die?
- Write down your decisions: Put your plan in writing in a legal document. See different advanced care documents below.
- Talk about it: Share the legal documents with your family and healthcare team. Talk about your decisions and answer any questions they may have. Doing so helps those caring for you to honor your wishes.
Advance care plans can change at any time. Be sure to share any updates to your plan with your loved ones and health care team.
Advanced Care Documents
These PDFs can help you with your advance care planning.
- Advance Directive Information: What to include in your advance care directive, designating your agent, indicating wishes for comfort care and making sure your directive is honored.
- Advance Care Planning Information: What is advance care planning and what are the benefits of having one.
- Hawaiʻi Advance Health Care Directive Form: Use this fillable form to designate your agent and specify your individual instructions for end-of-life decisions.
- Hawaiʻi Durable Power of Attorney Form: Use this fillable form to grant power of attorney to your agent to make decisions about your property.
- Fax Template for Advance Care Planning Documents: Cover sheet for transmitting advance care planning documents by fax.
Support Resources
Kōkua Mau
A Hawaiʻi-focused organization with resources for those with serious illnesses and their loved ones.
- A Consumer Guide to Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) for Hawaiʻi
- Advance Directive vs. POLST
- Multilingual Hawaiʻi Advance Directive Information
National Portable Medical Orders
POLST for seriously ill or frail individuals.
The Conversation Project
Helping people share their wishes for care through the end of life.
Care at Kapiʻolani
Understanding advance care planning will help you determine kind of care you would and would not want if you or your child became very sick. Knowing your healthcare wishes can provide comfort and peace of mind for you and your loved ones.
Beginning the discussion for advance care planning can seem daunting, however Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women & Children is here to help you take the first step. Contact your primary care provider today to discuss how creating an advance care plan can help you.
In the event you are hospitalized, your physician, nurse or social worker may schedule an appointment with an Advance Care Planning Facilitator.
Care at Pali Momi
Advance care at Pali Momi starts with your primary care provider (PCP). Your PCP can provide you with resources and help you begin the discussion about advance care planning.
Pali Momi also provides an Advance Care Planning Class that takes you through the process of deciding the kind of care you would and would not want if you became very sick and establishing legal documents to share with your family and healthcare team.
In the event you are hospitalized, your physician, nurse or social worker may schedule an appointment with an Advance Care Planning Facilitator.
Care at Straub Benioff
Sharing your healthcare wishes can provide comfort and peace of mind for you and your loved ones.
Straub Benioff provides an Advance Care Planning Class to help you better understand the kind of care you would and would not want if you became very ill and create the proper legal documentation to share.
Discuss your decisions with your primary care provider (PCP), your larger healthcare team, and your family.
In the event you are hospitalized, your physician, nurse or social worker may schedule an appointment with an Advance Care Planning Facilitator.
Care at Wilcox
Advance care planning at Wilcox starts with your primary care provider (PCP). Contact your PCP to discuss what should be in your advance care directive, and how to ensure that your wishes are honored should you become very sick.
In the event you are hospitalized, your physician, nurse or social worker may schedule an appointment with an Advance Care Planning Facilitator.
Advance Care Planning: The Conversation
Watch Personal Stories About Planning Ahead
View transcript
DR. DAWN MINAAI: There are many moments in life when we'll have the privilege and responsibility of caring for a loved one.
NARRATOR: During difficult times, the ability to honor and respect loved ones for their advance care planning needs comes from understanding their priorities, values, and wishes.
Having this conversation offers individuals and families the comfort of having a well-thought-out plan.
At Hawaiʻi Pacific Health, our advance care planning team has cultivated many conversations. Our compassionate and patient-centered staff helps to lighten the burden of uncertainty by asking the right questions and being specific.
Among the resources we offer are insightful, firsthand stories shared by courageous individuals such as Mr. Mark Rassi of Kauaʻi.
MARK RASSI: So we have also orange trees, navel orange trees, Valencia oranges, grapefruit, tangerine.
SHARLEEN RASSI: (speaking to chickens) You want to come up, girls?
MARK RASSI: Yeah.
SHARLEEN RASSI: And there's some eggs in here. Come on, girls. Come on.
MARK RASSI: We have a little ranch here where we raise our livestock, and I'm constantly out there working and getting exercise, so I thought, "Well, I've got to be in pretty good shape."
I went in for a routine colonoscopy, and they discovered that I had colon cancer. That's not the whole story.
I actually went over to UCLA to get my cancer surgery, and they said, "Oh, by the way, your heart is in really bad shape, and you need a quadruple bypass," which they did. So this was a complete surprise to me that I had health issues and that they were as severe as they were.
DARCY ATTISANI, RN: Advance care planning is not only for the patient. It's also for the family and loved ones who are making the decisions for that patient if they're unable to make the decisions for themselves.
MARK RASSI: Maybe you've said to them, "Well, I don't want to be resuscitated."
They're always going to be doubting themselves. Should I have done something? And you don't want to leave them with that burden of guilt.
You want to make sure that when they make that decision, that they are confident that that's what you wanted, and you have to tell them.
SHARLEEN RASSI: You just talk about it. That's all. You got to do it. If you don't do it, you don't know what the husband or the wife wants.
Narrator: With the help of informative videos from our advance care planning team, Mr. Rassi and his wife reached an understanding of Mark's wishes.
Many others with different situations also find comfort in preparation, as did Mr. Errol Hong of Honolulu.
ERROL HONG: I was in my doctor's office one day, and in the waiting room, I saw a pamphlet about advance care directive.
I said, "Well, maybe I'd better look into it." I think for most people, myself included, it's probably hard to confront those issues that may come.
But I did it primarily to ease the burden, because there might be confusion or indecisiveness on behalf of my family if something were to happen to me and I was incapacitated or if I had a terminal illness.
But whatever people care to do, I think it's important that they get that conversation going with their family. That's the important thing.
NARRATOR: Without the right tools, the conversation might seem daunting and difficult. But when approached ahead of time with proper support, it can help loved ones find clarity, peace, acceptance, and dignity.
The conversation can be a vital step in creating the right environment to share what you need to say and to meet the transition ahead with aloha.
DR. DAWN MINAAI: Ask us today for more information on how you can get started.