Talk Turkey
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to “talk turkey” with your loved ones about your wishes and preferences for health care in the event that you cannot speak for yourself. The Engage with Grace project will help to get the conversation started.
In Massachusetts, we use an Advance Directive which provides for the designation of a Health Care Proxy or agent, with an alternate named as well. This would be someone who would be our voice if we were ever in a position where we could not speak for ourselves. Often, this person is a family member or close friend. Ideally, it is someone who knows your personal wishes, values, and beliefs well. It is someone you can trust to make the same health care decisions you would make if you could. Choosing this person before he or she is needed can help you feel confident that you will always be treated according to your own wishes and values.
Thanksgiving is a perfect time for families and loved ones to have this most difficult of conversations, or what we call "Talk Turkey."
“Talk Turkey” emphasizes the importance of discussing “why” loved ones would want what they want. It is important for the proxy to understand the values present in the thinking and wishes of the patient, so that the proxy can approach decision-making according to the patient's wishes (if or when difficult decisions arise and patients cannot speak for themselves). Living wills are not used in Massachusetts, since decisions are not usually black and white. A health care proxy enables you to designate someone who can communicate your values and preferences, and who will make sure that your wishes about health care are carried out.
Every year since 1999, BIDMC's Ethics Support Service has worked to increase staff and patient awareness of the importance of Advance Directives. During the three days leading up to Thanksgiving each year, BIDMC staff volunteers hand out approximately 1,000 advance directives kits annually to staff and patients during lunch-time hours. Each year staff has increasingly noted how they have had discussions with their loved ones and patients about their wishes and have filled out the forms.
Engage with Grace
To help foster this "Talk Turkey" effort, BIDMC is a proud supporter of the Engage with Grace project. The Engage with Grace project has developed "One Slide" - a graphic that helps to get the conversation about end of life preferences started with loved ones. One Slide with just five questions to help get us talking. Just One Slide that we as a community could collectively rally around sharing – in meetings, at a conference, or over a drink.
This is the link to the slide, and this is what we are asking you to do…
1) Download The One Slide.
2) Share it any time you can – at the end of presentations, at dinner, or at your book club. Think of the slide as currency and donate just two minutes whenever you can.
3) Commit to being able to answer these five questions about end of life experience for yourself and for your loved ones. Then commit to helping others do the same. Get this conversation started.
Let's start a viral movement driven by the change we as individuals can affect …and the incredibly positive impact we could have collectively.
Just One Slide, just one goal. Think of the enormous difference we can make together.
