Health & Wellness Legal Planning

Advance Healthcare Directives

A practical guide to documenting medical wishes, choosing a healthcare agent, and preparing for difficult care decisions

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Quick Course Facts
18
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
18
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
6.2
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Advance Healthcare Directives Course

Advance Healthcare Directives is a Health & Wellness course that helps you make informed, thoughtful decisions about future medical care before a crisis occurs. This course gives students a practical guide to documenting medical wishes, choosing a healthcare agent, and preparing for difficult care decisions with greater clarity and confidence.

Prepare Advance Healthcare Directives With Confidence

  • Learn the essential terms, documents, and decisions involved in advance care planning.
  • Clarify your personal values so your medical preferences reflect what matters most to you.
  • Understand how to choose a healthcare agent and communicate your wishes effectively.
  • Gain practical guidance on completing, sharing, reviewing, and updating directive documents.

This Health & Wellness course explains Advance Healthcare Directives and the planning steps that help guide future care decisions.

Advance Healthcare Directives can help ensure that your treatment preferences are known if you are unable to speak for yourself. Through clear lessons on living wills, healthcare power of attorney, medical proxies, decision-making capacity, and surrogate decision-making, this course makes complex planning topics easier to understand.

You will explore important medical choices, including CPR, ventilators, ICU care, hospital transfers, artificial nutrition and hydration, comfort-focused care, palliative care, hospice, and quality of life considerations. The course also covers planning for dementia, cognitive decline, long-term illness, organ donation, religious and cultural considerations, and family communication.

Students will also learn how to create valid documents by reviewing state-specific forms, witnesses, notarization, legal limits, and when to work with attorneys, clinicians, and care facilities. By the end of the course, you will have a clearer framework for documenting your medical wishes, selecting the right healthcare agent, and discussing difficult care decisions with the people who may one day need to honor them.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Foundations of Advance Care Planning

3 lessons

Lesson 1: Why Advance Healthcare Directives Matter

18 min Preview
Advance healthcare directives matter because serious illness or injury can leave a person unable to speak for themselves. This lesson explains how advance directives protect personal choice, reduce co…

Lesson 2: Key Terms: Directive, Living Will, Proxy, Agent, and Surrogate

20 min
This lesson defines the core vocabulary used in advance healthcare directives: directive , living will , healthcare proxy , agent , and surrogate . Learners will understand how these terms relate to o…

Lesson 3: Decision-Making Capacity and When a Directive Takes Effect

19 min
This lesson explains what decision-making capacity means in the context of advance healthcare directives and why capacity is different from a diagnosis, disability, or temporary confusion. Learners wi…

Core Directive Documents

4 lessons

Lesson 4: Living Wills and Treatment Preference Statements

21 min
This lesson explains how living wills and treatment preference statements document a person’s medical wishes when they cannot speak for themselves. It focuses on what these documents typically cover, …

Lesson 5: Healthcare Power of Attorney and Choosing an Agent

22 min
This lesson explains the healthcare power of attorney, sometimes called a healthcare proxy, medical power of attorney, or designation of healthcare surrogate depending on the state. The focus is on ho…

Lesson 6: DNR, DNI, and Emergency Medical Orders

20 min
This lesson explains how DNR , DNI , and emergency medical order forms work during urgent medical situations. Unlike a general advance directive, these documents are designed to guide clinicians, emer…

Lesson 7: POLST and MOLST: When Medical Orders Are Appropriate

21 min
POLST and MOLST forms are medical orders for people with serious illness, advanced frailty, or a condition where emergency treatment choices need to be clearly actionable. Unlike an advance directive,…

Medical Choices and Personal Values

4 lessons

Lesson 8: Clarifying Values Before Choosing Treatments

18 min
This lesson helps learners identify the personal values that should guide future medical decisions before they choose specific treatments in an advance directive. It explains why values often matter m…

Lesson 9: CPR, Ventilators, ICU Care, and Hospital Transfer Decisions

23 min
This lesson explains four common crisis-care decisions that often appear in advance healthcare planning: CPR, ventilators, ICU-level treatment, and transfer to a hospital. Learners will examine what e…

Lesson 10: Artificial Nutrition, Hydration, and Comfort-Focused Care

22 min
This lesson helps learners think clearly about artificial nutrition, artificial hydration, and comfort-focused care when completing an advance healthcare directive. It explains what these treatments c…

Lesson 11: Pain Relief, Palliative Care, Hospice, and Quality of Life

21 min
This lesson helps learners express preferences about comfort-focused care, pain relief, palliative care, hospice, and quality of life in an advance healthcare directive. It distinguishes these related…

Special Planning Situations

3 lessons

Lesson 12: Planning for Dementia, Cognitive Decline, and Long-Term Illness

24 min
This lesson focuses on advance directive planning when a person may face dementia, cognitive decline, or a long-term progressive illness. These situations require more than a standard emergency checkl…

Lesson 13: Organ Donation, Autopsy, Burial, and Body Disposition Wishes

18 min
This lesson explains how advance healthcare planning can include wishes that take effect at or shortly after death: organ and tissue donation, autopsy preferences, burial or cremation choices, body do…

Lesson 14: Religious, Cultural, and Family Considerations

20 min
This lesson examines how religious beliefs, cultural values, and family dynamics can affect advance healthcare directive planning. Learners will identify the kinds of care preferences that may need mo…

Creating Valid Documents

2 lessons

Lesson 15: State-Specific Forms, Witnesses, Notarization, and Legal Limits

23 min
This lesson explains how advance healthcare directives become legally valid documents. Learners will focus on state-specific forms, signature rules, witness and notarization requirements, and common l…

Lesson 16: Working with Attorneys, Clinicians, and Care Facilities

19 min
This lesson explains how to use attorneys, clinicians, and care facilities effectively when creating advance healthcare directive documents. The focus is not on handing decisions over to professionals…

Putting the Plan Into Practice

2 lessons

Lesson 17: Talking with Your Agent, Family, and Healthcare Team

22 min
This lesson focuses on what happens after an advance directive is drafted: the conversations that make it usable. Learners will practice explaining their wishes to a healthcare agent, preparing family…

Lesson 18: Storing, Sharing, Reviewing, and Updating Your Directive

20 min
This lesson turns an advance healthcare directive from a completed document into a usable plan. Learners will focus on where to store the directive, who should receive copies, how to talk about it wit…
About Your Instructor
Professor Mark Davis

Professor Mark Davis

Professor Mark Davis guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.