Garnering Support for Advance Care Planning

Advance care planning (ACP), widely viewed by the medical community as an underused means of improving end-of-life care by allowing patients to exert their fundamental right to self-determination over future events and to ensure that they receive care at the end of life consistent with their values, was thereby transformed into a means for the government to deny individuals the care they desire. Here, Fried and Drickamer detail on how the public can garner support for ACP. They stress that advance care planning may best be considered a part of medical care similar to counseling about exercise, smoking cessation, dietary change, and cancer screening.