TAMPA, Fla. (July 7, 2022)—Five Wishes, an advance care planning program (ACP), has won the 2022 Caregiver Friendly Award from Today’s Caregiver magazine and caregiver.com. The Caregiver Friendly Awards are designed to celebrate products, services, books and media created with the needs of caregivers in mind.
Five Wishes was recognized for its 25 years of support and service to caregivers. The program was developed as the first advance care plan to address personal, emotional and spiritual wishes, in addition to medical treatment. It’s called the “living will with heart and soul” because it’s based on what is most important—being able to define a roadmap for how you want to be cared for.
Today’s Caregiver is the first national magazine for all family and professional caregivers. “The average caregiver is responsible for over $40,000 in health-related expenditures each year, in either personal or directed funds,” said Gary Barg, editor-in chief of Today’s Caregiver. “This award is designed to help family caregivers recognize and reward those organizations who will care for them in as committed a manner as they care for their loved ones.” It has been embraced by families, caregivers, community groups, faith communities, medical and legal providers, and businesses
Five Wishes has distributed more than 40 million advance directives and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from caregivers. It’s the start of an important conversation between patients, families and their caregivers. It gives everyone peace of mind to know that health care wishes have been discussed and documented. No one has the burden of guessing someone’s wishes should an emergency arise.
“I really appreciate how well the Five Wishes booklet is organized and how gentle the questions are. I have found that Five Wishes is the easiest and most thorough form to use in confronting such a potentially intimidating subject,” said Trisha Jauchler, MS, MA, RDT/BCT from Los Angeles, California.
“For the last 25 years, we’ve distributed 40 million of our paper documents, and when you think about it as a health care advocate or health care agent for someone, it’s probably their caregiver,” said Joanne Eason, President of Five Wishes. “So, in essence, we’ve worked with millions of caregivers over the last two-plus decades. We’re also seeing a blooming interest in other organizations like patient advocates and end-of-life doulas and other caregiving organizations that do the groundwork of caregiving every day and see the value of Five Wishes”.
More than 40,000 partner organizations assist in the distribution of Five Wishes, most notable over 1,000 hospices as well as Caralell, a caregiver empowerment organization, that just completed an advance care planning program using Five Wishes in urban Chicago. Five Wishes is available in several formats (paper, digital and PDF) and comes in 30 different languages.
Visit fivewishes.org for more information.
