• General Information
• Professional Resources
• Local Hospice & Palliative Care
  
• Caregiver &
  Family Tools
  
• Physician &
  Provider Tools

These resources, which you can find either on the web or in print, represent local, state and national organizations and programs that address hospice, palliative care and end-of-life issues.

Local, State and Regional

Central Massachusetts Agency on Aging at www.seniorconnection.org
maintains a caregiver guide with information regarding services, getting help, and caring for the caregiver.

United Way of Central Massachusetts at www.unitedwaycm.org maintains “First Call for Help,” a resource guide to health and other services in Central Massachusetts.

Worcester District Medical Society at www.wdms.org offers a resource guide and a list of other community services related to health and elder care.

Massachusetts Compassionate Care Coalition at www.massccc.com, a voluntary organization, works with other regional coalitions to improve end of life care in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts End of Life Commission at www.endoflifecommission.org seeks to improve the quality of life at the end of life. It maintains an excellent end of life resource guide to services throughout Massachusetts.

Massachusetts Office of Emergency Medical Services at www.state.ma.us/dph/oems, choose Comfort Care. This site provides information about the Comfort Care/Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Verification Form, which is the only form in Massachusetts that emergency personnel will honor outside of a hospital if you do not wish to be resuscitated.

National

The American Bar Association at www.abanet.org/aging/toolkit/home.html provides a toolkit for health care decision-making, selecting an agent, and having conversations with loved ones and health care providers.

The Center for Practical Bioethics at www.practicalbioethics.org sponsors Caring Conversations, a consumer education initiative that helps individuals and their families share meaningful conversation while making practical preparations for end-of-life decisions.

Caring Connections maintains www.caringinfo.org, a national consumer engagement initiative to improve care at the end of life. It provides excellent information about advance care planning, grieving, advice for caregivers and patients. Advance directives for every state can be downloaded. The Community menu at http://www.caringinfo.org/community has resources for starting, building and maintaining community-based coalitions to improve end of life care.

Aging with Dignity provides Five Wishes, a document used by millions of Americans to let their family and doctors know how they want to be treated if they cannot speak for themselves. Five Wishes not only covers how you wish to be treated medically, but also personally, emotionally and spiritually. Copies of Five Wishes are available for a small fee and can be ordered from www.agingwithdignity.org. The Five Wishes document is legal in all but 12 states.