These activities can be conducted during South Carolina Health Care Decisions Month or can extend beyond the campaign and be carried out throughout the year.

• Sign up as an active participant in South Carolina Healthcare Decisions Month. Encourage other organizations, including your business/community partners, to sign up and participate as well. Add your name today!

• Email our call to action to 5 friends and share it on social media.

• Lead by example and encourage others to do the same. Read more »

• View our Advance Care Planning Discussion Guide.

• Use this Toolkit and the resources and templates below. Publicize local and statewide activities in your organization’s newsletter and/or other communication outlets.

• Download and fill out our “What Matters Most” ACP bubble map!

• Support the My Life My Choices media campaign by using the Media Guide for SC Healthcare Decisions Month.

• Take advantage of our training resources to educate your staff. Read more »

• Consider adding My Life My Choices training modules to pre-conference activities to ensure your members are thoroughly equipped to lead by example and to support patients and families. Contact us at info@mylifemychoices.org to learn more about available trainings in your area.

• Integrate discussions about advance care planning in all upcoming meetings, and events in April. In the past, some organizations have begun meetings by asking attendees if they have completed advance care planning themselves and how to obtain more information. You could also have an open discussion about what matters most or what do you consider a good day.

• Explore implementation of an employee incentive program which provides employees with bonus points to decrease health insurance premiums if they attest that they have an updated advance care planning document which they have shared with loved ones and that they understand the need to share the document with their health care providers. Several “Working Well” programs have implemented this model which originated with the South Carolina Hospital Association.

When it comes to advance care planning, we believe in leading by example. This means first conducting your own advance care planning and encouraging those around you—whether friends, family, or colleagues to do the same.   This process starts as we think about our individual goals of care preferences, talk about our preferences with loved ones, and write our preferences in an advance directive.

If we have already completed an advance directive, then we are encouraged to periodically review and update the documents, if necessary, to ensure that our health care preferences still align with what has been expressed to those who matter to us and documented in an advance directive.

Although advance directives are important, they are no substitute for clarifying conversations. As you are talking to those who matter to you—whether friends, family, religious leaders, or your doctors—remember the goal is to have meaningful conversations about your preferences for care at all stages of life and health.

Our values and preferences often stem from everyday joys that fulfill us, things that matter to us and what a good day looks like to us. These are conversations that everyone should have, no matter their age or health status.

TAKE ACTION

• Think About It.  Think about what matters most to you. What do you consider a good day?  

• Talk About It.  Engage in a good talk with people who matter—whether family, friends, pastors or clinicians—about what really matters most to you.

• Write It Down.  Complete, review or update your South Carolina Health Care Power of Attorney

• Encourage your team to do the same.  This can be taken as a challenge to complete the process above.  Have fun with it while also recognizing that for many this may be very difficult.  Also, focus on what matters most and talking to those who matter. The My Life My Choices Advance Care Planning Discussion Guide (Coming Soon!) is a helpful resource to get started.  

• Set a simple goal to staff and employee encouraging engagement.  Consider how you will reach your team and by when.

• Plan employee educational activities.  

• Consider leveraging existing activities to streamline planning and to avoid having competing events.  

• Identify articles or personal stories that can be shared throughout the organization via intranet, public website or even screensavers.

Health care professionals, whether physicians, nurses or social workers, may feel uncomfortable engaging with patients and families in advance care planning conversations. There is education and training available to help staff and employees on how to effectively support patients and families in having advance care planning conversations.

My Life My Choices offers the following training resources to support your efforts:

Health care professionals may receive continuing education for completion of specified educational modules. All individuals trained in Respecting Choices® First Steps® will be recognized as certified advance care planning facilitators.

My Life My Choices has trained over 1,000 health care providers throughout South Carolina and has over 25 trained instructors utilizing Ariadne Lab’s Serious Illness Conversation Program. Our goal is to continue to build capacity of physicians trained in conducting effective, high quality advance care planning conversations with their seriously ill patients.

This curriculum helps clinicians conduct share-decision making and explore goals, fears, strengths, critical abilities, tradeoffs, and family awareness. Clinicians are also able to recommend a way forward.

We recommend that health care providers take an interdisciplinary approach to training clinicians, recognizing that the physician alone cannot conduct meaningful advance care planning conversations. This education and training are not meant to overburden physicians, but to increase their ability to have these conversations with their patients.  Both curricula are evidence-based, and patient-tested.

Contact My Life My Choices at info@mylifemychoices.org for information on available training in your area.

TAKE ACTION

• Plan education activities within your organization for staff and employees. My Life My Choices has a number of resources to support your efforts including access to the South Carolina Coalition for the Care of the Seriously Ill’s (SC CSI) Speaker’s Bureau. Contact us at info@mylifemychoices.org to request a speaker. 

• Learn about availability of regional Serious Illness Conversation Program and Respecting Choices® First Steps® courses in your area. Both courses are evidence-based and patient tested. Since 2018, we have trained over 1,000 health care professionals and have over 25 instructor statewide utilizing the Serious Illness Conversation Program. Contact us at info@mylifemychoices.org for more information. 

• Share team members experiences with advance care planning, both positive and negative, to illustrate the need to have advance directives that are honored by loved ones and providers. 

• Engage with My Life My Choices social media campaign. (link to social media resources)

• Provide staff and employees opportunities to publicly express what matters most to them.  This can be done by simply distributing post-it notes or index cards that can be displayed on a bulletin board within the facility, practice, clinical settings, or administrative areas.

• Remember to measure your efforts but keep it simple. How many education sessions? How many people talked to loved ones and the people that matter most to them? How many people completed or updated a South Carolina Health Care Power of Attorney form?

• Celebrate your success with your team. Share your success stories with us at info@mylifemychoices.org and we will promote them on our website and social media channels.

Advance care planning has typically occurred in a clinical setting—a hospital or doctor’s office—as clinicians engage patient and families to understand what matters most to them through person-centered conversations and/or educational sessions.

Engagement should expand beyond the health care system, however, to meet people where they live, work, and pray. By leading by example, we understand and empathize how difficult these conversations may be.

Nevertheless, conversations clarify. We can’t plan for everything, but we can help manage life’s unknowns by talking openly about what matters and what we’d want most if we become seriously ill. Conversations about things we can’t control can actually help give us a sense of control.

As we talk to those who matter to us—whether friends, family, religious leaders, or our doctors—remember the goal is to have meaningful conversations about our preferences for care at all stages of life and health.  Our values and preferences often stem from everyday joys that fulfill us, things that matter to us and what a good day looks like to us. These are conversations that everyone should have, no matter their age or health status.

Spiritual leaders and community organizations have an important role in this as they may have the most meaningful relationships with community members.

Learn more about how to engage communities and congregations by using The Conversation Project’s Getting Started Guide for Communities and Getting Started Guide for Congregations.

TAKE ACTION

• Schedule at least one education activity for the people you serve.

• Incorporate advance care planning discussions within existing groups including support groups. Consider inviting trained advance care planning facilitators as guest speakers.

• Schedule advance care planning clinics within health care facilities.  These clinics are designed to provide information to patients regarding advance care planning and can include facilitated advance care planning conversations (i.e., Serious Illness Conversation Program and Respecting Choices® First Steps®).  Consider the following:

• Providing facilitated conversations for specific patient populations. This conversation can be conducted on the nursing unit by a trained chaplain, nurse and/or social worker;

• Requesting copies of up-to-date executed advance directives to be uploaded into the My Life My Choices eRegistry, the patient’s electronic medical record and establishing a system to follow up if the patient or family forgets to bring them; and,

• Providing printed information about additional resources to support advance care planning, including but not limited to My Life My Choices resources.

• Encourage Medicare patients to schedule their Annual Wellness Visit and encourage clinicians to integrate advance care planning conversations into this visit as a billable activity under Medicare.   ACP related conversation with Medicare enrollees are billable; however, conversations conducted during the Annual Wellness Visit will not incur a co-pay for the patient. Related Resource: End-of-Life Care Conversations: Medicare Reimbursement FAQS