Health Care Directive - Do it Yourself

A Health Care Directive tells your caregivers and doctors what to do if you become unable to make decisions about your health care. With a Health Care Directive, you can:

• Write your wishes for Health Care, or

• Name an agent who can make decisions for you, or

• Do both.
   

Depending on what you want to do, you will need to give certain information to get through the interview. A lot of it is basic, like your name, address and birthdate. But some is not.

If You Want to Name an Agent
There is no legal limit to the number of agents you can name. However, with this program you are limited to two agents and two "alternate" agents.

You will need to give the name, address and telephone number of anyone who will be your agent or alternate agent.

Almost anyone over 18 can be your agent, as long as he or she can make good decisions. Your agent cannot be your health care provider, or an employee of your health care provider, unless you are related to that person.

If You Want to Write Your Wishes
You will need time. Writing your wishes can take over an hour. If you need a break, you can save and come back later. You will need to be ready to face some hard questions:

• How do you feel about using feeding tubes?
• What makes life worth living, and is it ever not worth living?
• How do your spiritual beliefs affect your wishes for care?
• Where do you want to be when you die?

It can help if you have thought about such things before. Consider talking to your doctor, counselor or spiritual leader. You can leave any questions blank if you want.

If your wishes change, you can change your Health Care Directive or make a new one.

Read the Health Care Directives Fact Sheet for more information.

If you are at a library, you can skip this step of instructions. Public computers already have these programs installed. If you are using your own computer, make sure your computer has Microsoft Word.

(Note: Microsoft Word Pad is not the same as Microsoft Word and will not work with this program.)

Start the interview by visiting the Health Care Directives interview on LawHelp Interactive. You will be taken to a new website. 

Once on LawHelp Interactive, choose:

1. "Get Started" to complete the interview right away, 
   
   OR
    
2. "Create Account or Log In" to create an account so you can save your answers and come back later if you need more time.
    

Start the Interview!