A partnership with your healthcare provider is crucial to health and well-being. This partnership spans an entire lifetime from birth, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. This unfortunately includes caring for dying loved ones and one’s own sacred passage of dying.
A critical part of this partnership is making your voice heard throughout the life cycle, making sure your wishes are honored.
“Honoring My Wishes: My Voice Matters” is a workshop supported by MGG which focuses on the health care partnership at the end of life. Those situations are sometimes difficult to discuss, but can be alleviated by an Advanced Directive , a document which describes the care one wishes to receive in those end of life moments. We would rather not say good-bye, but we know that if we have the courage in advance to put our wishes about end of life on paper or on a trusted website, we will have more peace ourselves. And maybe more importantly, we can prevent our family from suffering through conflict and disagreement about end of life care at our passing. They will grieve, of course, but have more peace that their loved one’s wishes were honored. It can be comforting to know that their loved one’s voice mattered.
“Honoring My Wishes: My Voice Matters” workshops address what an Advance Directive is and why it is important. The workshops also explain how to create a plan for an advanced directive, communicate your wishes, protect the information, and complete the directive.
“Honoring My Wishes” is offered through a grant from the Maryland Department of Health in partnership with Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Spiritual Care Department, Medicine for the Greater Good and the Healthy Community Partnership.