Imagine for a moment that you’re at home and you go into cardiac arrest. Would you want the person or people caring for you to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation?

If they did and you made it to the hospital only to slip into a coma, would you want to be on a ventilator or undergo intubation? These are all questions that many families face each year without input from their incapacitated love ones.

Our live-in home health care aides in Florida, witness such emotional decisions being made on a regular basis. So in recognition of Long Term Care Planning Month, they wanted to highlight the importance of being prepared for such unfortunate occurrences. One of the simplest ways to get started is to obtain a free, downloadable toolkit from the American Bar Association and go through it carefully.

The ABA’s toolkit contains all of the basic information needed to start a conversation with yourself and loved ones about advance directives. Once the conversation is complete, the Florida Bar has blank copies of several legal forms that you and your loved ones may use to make your long term care planning healthcare decisions known. The downloaded forms are free and may be printed out at home or through most Florida libraries.

Our live-in home health care aides would also like to note that not all of the forms Floridians need for long term care planning are available through those two legal organizations. There are other forms, like those related to organ donation, which must be obtained elsewhere. Families living in Brevard, Palm Beach and Dade Counties that are interested in anatomical gifting and organ donation should ask their live-in home health care aides or home care coordinator about the Joshua Abbott Organ and Tissue Donor Registry. It’s typically the first step on the road to becoming a donor.

After all of the above arrangements have been made, a copy of the healthcare advance directives should be given to all live-in home health care aides and the home health agencies in Miami that they are affiliated with. That way, every member of a Floridian’s healthcare team will be on the same page should an emergency ever strike. To learn more about advance directives and other long term care planning tasks, please contact our home care coordinators today.