Resource Center

This is a tool to help you talk about what matters to you and your wishes for the care you receive through the end of life. Talking with the important people in our life can bring us closer together. It also helps us create the foundation of a care plan that’s right for us — a plan that will be available when the need arises. The Conversation Project wants to help everyone talk about their wishes for care through the end of life, so those wishes can be understood and respected. We created this guide to help you start a conversation (and keep talking) so you can have a say in your health care — today and tomorrow. It’s also important to choose what’s known as a health care proxy, or health care advocate — someone who would make health care decisions on your behalf if you became unable to voice those decisions yourself.

Developed by The Conversation Project, an initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement

About the organization: The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has used improvement science to advance and sustain better outcomes in health and health care across the world. ​IHI was officially founde​d in 1991, but our work began in the late 1980s as part of the National Demonstration Project on Quality Improvement in Health Care, led by Donald Berwick, MD, MPP.