Ready, Set, Plan!

Vermont Advance Directive Week begins April 13th, 2025

What is Vermont Advance Directive Week?

Vermont Advance Directive Week (April 13-19, 2025) is devoted to educating and raising awareness about the importance of advance care planning. Each year, this week coincides with National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD), "an annual initiative celebrated on April 16th to encourage and empower people to begin or continue conversations about their wishes for care through the end of life." NHDD is coordinated by The Conversation Project which provides resources to participants in all 50 states and more than 20 countries.

Check out who has pledged to participate this year: Join the Movement (NHDD)

To celebrate Vermont Advance Directive Week, VEN will be sharing stories, resources, and local events across the state to encourage all Vermonters to have conversations about their health care values and consider completing or updating their advance directives.

How to participate in Vermont Advance Directive Week:

Complete your own advance directive & share copies with your healthcare agent, loved ones, and your healthcare provider.
Register your advance directive with the Vermont Advance Directive Registry.
Tell someone you know about why you completed your advance directive.
Start a conversation with friends or loved ones about what matters to you regarding your healthcare. If you couldn’t speak for yourself, what do those close to you need to know?
Attend or host local events. Sign up for the Vermont Ethics Network Newsletter to see what events are happening in your area or check out our News and Events page.

Conversation Starters

Advance Directive Forms

Want to host an event for VT Advance Directive Week?

Ideas, free resources and more

If you've already completed your advance directive and are interested in spreading the word in your community, consider hosting an event to discuss advance care planning and advance directives.

Ways to host an event for individuals, communities and healthcare facilities:

Who's Hosting?

For individuals -

Invite friends and loved ones to chat over tea or coffee about why you completed your advance directive.
A signing & witnessing party - bring your advance directives and sign and witness them with friends!

For community organizers -

A film/documentary screening at your community center or library (find film/documentary ideas here)
Staffing a table to share advance care planning tools and forms
Inviting a guest speaker for a presentation on advance care planning

For healthcare centers and hospitals -

Trainings for staff on how to begin advance care planning conversations
Promoting staff to complete their own advance directives with free Taking Steps resources
Set up a table in the lobby with information about advance care planning and free advance directive forms

More ideas from The Conversation Project

Vermont Advance Directive Week Community Event Toolkit

Whether you are planning a conversation with friends or a larger community event, you can get Taking Steps booklets, forms and info-graphics from the Vermont Ethics Network. Keep reading for more information below about how to get free resources from VEN.

If you are hosting an event and would like to be advertised in the Vermont Ethics Network Newsletter and on our website, please fill out the form below:

Community Presentations: Getting Started with Your Advance Directive

The Vermont Ethics Network offers free, in-person or virtual presentations on how to use Vermont advance directive forms and the Vermont Advance Directive Registry. VEN also offers customized presentations for healthcare professionals on a variety of advance care planning and medical ethics topics.

If you are a community center, senior living center, health care facility, or any community group interested in healthcare topics, fill out the form below to request a presentation.

Request a Presentation

Taking Steps Resources:

Up to 60 Booklets for just the cost of shipping!

Taking Steps Vermont is the advance care planning initiative at the Vermont Ethics Network. Initially funded by a Collective Impact grant, VEN continues to produce the Taking Steps series of brochures and booklets to guide you through the process of having healthcare conversations with your doctors, friends and family, starting from appointing a health care agent in an advance directive, all the way to considering DNR/COLST orders for limitations of treatment.

This stepwise plan for the stages of advance care planning lets you start where it feels right for you. If you are looking for a guide to starting your advance directive, look no further! VEN is now offering up to 60 copies of the Step 2 guide for only the cost of shipping.

Vermont does not have a specific form that is required for a legal advance directive, so you can choose the form that works best for wherever you are in the process. All advance directives allow you to appoint your healthcare agent, and each has a different amount of space for your treatment goals and priorities.

Step 1: Choose Your Person

Appointing a Health Care Agent

The quickest an easiest place to start! All advance directives allow you to appoint an agent, but if you want to only choose an agent without adding any treatment preferences, this is the form for you.

Includes:

Vermont Appointment of a Healthcare Agent Form

Step 2: Make a Plan

Document treatment priorities

Our most popular publication, recently updated in December 2024 with the latest information for completing Vermont advance directives.

Includes:

Vermont Advance Directive Short Form

By request, we can also include the Vermont Advance Directive Long Form with your order.

Step 3: Set Your Limits

Consider limitations of treatment

In Vermont, Do-not-resuscitate (DNR)/Clinician orders for life-sustaining treatment (COLST) are portable medical orders. These orders can only be completed by your clinician after a conversation with you or your decision-maker. This brochure will help you think about whether a DNR/COLST order should be a part of your advance care plan.

Learn more about DNR/COLST orders

Request Taking Steps Publications

Advance Directives on VPR

In January, Vermont Public featured the importance of advance care planning conversations and advance directives as a part of the ‘In Good Health’ series. Read/listen to the interviews with Vermont clinicians and Vermont Ethics Network Executive Director, Cindy Bruzzese, below.

On Morning Edition: Many of us hope we’ll die in our sleep. Most of us won’t. Here’s how to plan for that.

On Vermont Edition: In Good Health: Living Wills

Your support makes our work possible!

The Vermont Ethics Network is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization. We rely on annual grant funding and community donations to support our work. Consider making a donation to support the Vermont Ethics Network in creating accessible advance care planning information and providing free statewide education on medical decision-making.

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