What Should Your Family Have Ready Before a Health Crisis?

The worst time to start looking for important healthcare information is in the middle of an emergency.

Unfortunately, that is often when families realize they are missing it.

Someone is trying to find a medication list.

No one is sure who the healthcare proxy is.

A family member is calling siblings to figure out the name of a specialist.

Someone asks what Mom would want if she could not make decisions for herself, and everyone suddenly realizes they have never really talked about it.

A little planning ahead can make that moment much easier.

At the very least, every adult should have a current medication list, allergy information, major diagnoses, physician and specialist names, insurance information, emergency contacts, and a healthcare proxy.

Those documents should also be somewhere another person can actually find them.

That sounds obvious, but plenty of people have everything beautifully organized in a drawer no one else knows about.

Healthcare planning is also more than paperwork.

It is conversation.

Who would you trust to speak for you if you could not speak for yourself?

What matters most to you if you become seriously ill?

Are there treatments you would or would not want?

You do not have to map out every possible medical scenario.

But talking about your values ahead of time gives the people who care about you something to work from if they ever have to make difficult decisions, and an experienced advocate can help guide those conversations.

Massachusetts residents can also find helpful information and planning resources through Massachusetts Health Decisions, a nonprofit organization that provides education around healthcare decision-making and ethical issues in care.

The Nursing Suite has also created a Health Care Planning page with resources families can use to get organized before a crisis happens.

Planning ahead is not pessimistic.

It is practical.

And for the people who love you, it can be an enormous gift.

Talk to a Nurse if you would like help getting started.