iDecideAdvance directive
With your advance directive, you stay in control of your treatment, even if you can no longer speak for yourself.
What is an advance directive?
An advance directive (AD) is a legal document that anyone with decision-making capacity can create to record their medical wishes. It is an important part of advance care planning: an ongoing process of thinking about your own medical preferences and treatment goals and writing them down.
When does it apply?
If you are no longer able to make decisions yourself, that is, if you have lost decision-making capacity, your advance directive speaks for you. Its content then represents your will, together with your healthcare proxy or proxies. In Switzerland, healthcare professionals are, in principle, required by law to follow your advance directive. Your AD thus provides clarity and takes pressure off your relatives.
Who is it for, and why?
For everyone, regardless of age or state of health.
- Your wishes are known, even if you fall ill unexpectedly or have an accident.
- Your relatives know how to act in line with your wishes. This supports them and eases the burden of difficult decisions.
- Uncertainty and misunderstandings about your treatment are avoided.
Decide today what will apply to you tomorrow.
What does it contain?
Healthcare proxy
Who decides in line with your wishes when you no longer can.
Attitudes to life
Your values, fears and priorities.
Medical procedures
Which procedures you want or refuse if you lose decision-making capacity.
Organ donation
Whether or not you want to donate your organs.
In iDecide, short texts and videos explain each topic and guide you step by step. You don't have to fill in everything at once. Simply choosing a healthcare proxy already takes pressure off your relatives and healthcare professionals.
iDecide is based on the FMH advance directive and was developed with the University Centre for Palliative Care at Inselspital, Bern University Hospital.
The conversation
An advance directive starts with thinking and talking. Most important is an open conversation with your healthcare proxy. If you lose decision-making capacity, they can draw on this conversation and decide in line with your wishes.
Communication guide
Not sure how to start talking about difficult topics such as loss of decision-making capacity and the end of life? Our communication guide helps you start the conversation with your healthcare proxy and raise the important questions.
In an emergency
Along with the PDF, iDecide creates a QR code with your key details: your decisions and the phone numbers of your healthcare proxy and your GP. It is printed on the emergency card you carry in your wallet. The medical team can read it with any smartphone camera. The data is in the code itself and is not held on any server.
The version you have signed always takes precedence. If you change your advance directive, print a new emergency card as well.
Download iDecide – create your advance directive
Download iDecide and get to your own advance directive quickly.
Stay in control of your medical treatment – whatever happens.