Module 9 Pull Down Navigation - Select a Page to View ------------------- Introduction What is an Advance Care Plan? Importance of an Advance Care Plan Advance Care Plan Components Getting Started on an Advance Care Plan Questions for Your Doctor or Nurse Discussions with Your Doctor or Nurse Making Care Choices as Heart Failure Progresses What to Do with Your Advance Care Plan Changing Your Mind Care for the Caretakers Terms Commonly Used in Advance Care Planning Learn More About Heart Failure

Terms Commonly Used in Advance Care Planning

As you work on an advance care plan, it may be helpful to familiarize yourself with the following terms.

Advance care directives: A document that lets a person give directions about his or her future medical care or to choose another person to make medical decisions if the person is not able to make decisions about his or her health.

Coma: A state of permanent unconscious deep sleep.

Do-not-resuscitate order: A type of advance directive that specifies when CPR, types of medical treatment, or technology are to be used or not used to revive a person if they stop breathing or if their heart beats irregularly or stops entirely.

End-stage heart failure: A stage of heart failure when there is a loss of response to maximal therapy with medicines and devices, and the patient has experienced repeated hospitalizations over the past three months due to severe, ongoing symptoms and distress, and a heart transplant or support with a ventricular assist device is not feasible.

Health care power of attorney: A document that involves choosing a person to be an attorney-in-fact regarding all health care decisions, including the decision to refuse life-sustaining treatment when the person is unable to make decisions themselves. A durable health care power of attorney remains in effect even after you become incapacitated.

If the person has a living will, the person holding the health care power of attorney has the authority to interpret the living will in the event of questions and make decisions that he or she believes to be in the best interest of the person.

Hospice: A type of care program that supports patients and their families through the dying process and helps surviving family members through bereavement.

Living will: A legal document that lets a person who is unable to make decisions (usually because of inability to communicate during a terminal illness) express their wishes about life-sustaining treatment.

Palliative care: A type of care program that can be used when a disease is no longer responsive to curative treatment. Palliative care generally involves treatments that seek to soothe, prevent, relieve or reduce symptoms.

Resuscitation: Taking measures to save a person's life in the event they stop breathing, their heart beats erratically, or their heart stops beating.

Sudden cardiac arrest: When the heart suddenly stops pumping enough blood to sustain life, because an electrical problem in the heart causes an extremely fast and/ or chaotic heart rhythm.

Terminal illness: An illness in which death is expected to occur with or without medical intervention. The term also applies to an irreversible condition, when there is no reasonable chance for recovery.

Permanent vegetative state: A state that occurs when there has been permanent brain damage severe enough that the person is unaware of their surroundings. The person can not communicate, understand, or meaningfully appreciate life, and there is no reasonable chance for recovery.