April 16: A Day to Consider and Communicate Your Health Care Choices

NASW is pleased to continue its support for National Healthcare Decisions Day, now in its seventh year. Join the observance by encouraging your clients to consider, discuss, and document their goals for their health care—and by preparing, reviewing, and sharing your own advance directives.

Advance care planning is more than a document. It’s an ongoing process that can help each individual direct her or his health care. Social workers play an integral role in helping clients understand, and engage in, advance care planning.

Resources

National Health Care Decisions Day Web site

NASW Practice Perspective: Reexamining Advance Care Planning

Legal Defense Fund Legal Issue of the Month: Social Workers and Advance Directives

Information about the social work role in advance care planning on NASW’s consumer Web site, Help Starts Here

Information about advance care planning on the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s consumer Web site, Caring Connections

Hospice Foundation of America spring 2014 program on adolescent loss, presented in cooperation with NASW

Chris Herman, MSW, LICSW
NASW Senior Practice Associate