Advanced Healthcare Directives
What are 'advanced healthcare directives'?
An Advanced Healthcare Directive is a legal document that allows an individual to give an authorization to respect your wishes in how you would want to be treated in a specific situation, when you can no longer speak properly for yourself. It's actually used to designate another person to make medical decisions for you, and it's really called the Living Will, in simpler terms.
What information should my advanced healthcare directive contain?
An advanced healthcare directive anticipates end of life orientated decisions. It deals with issues such as your wishes to be maintained on artificial life support. An advanced healthcare directive relates to whether or not you wish to have heroic measures used for you, such as resuscitating you if you have a cardiac arrest, depending on the situation. For example: if you are terminally ill, you may wish not to have heroic measures done, but allow the normal, natural processes to occur; but then you may very well wish to have heroic measures, and only you can express your needs in your own best interests. When you can not communicate them because you have a brain injury, you're comatose, you're under the influence of extremely debilitating medications or whatever, by dealing with this in advance - and this is why its called an advanced health care directive - it allows your care-givers and allows your custodian to make end of life decisions that are consistent with what you would like best done for yourself.
Where can I find advanced healthcare directive worksheets?
Federal law requires that all hospitals make a worksheet available for you to fill out an advanced healthcare directive. Before you are admitted, you can obtain that in the admitting office of a hospital, you could obtain that from a patient representative, and surely you can obtain that from the department of social services at the hospital. Once you are admitted, you can ask the nurse to give you that information about advanced healthcare directives. You can also find that information through the American Bar Association. You can find it through an organization known as NOAH - New York Online Access to Healthcare - which provides information about advanced health care directives, and this information is organized by state, and includes some state-specific forms.
How do I make my advanced healthcare directive a legal document?
To avoid any conflicts and any issues later on, the key is to make sure that your advanced healthcare directive is clear and unambiguous. You also want to make sure that it is signed. Ideally it should be signed and notarized and witnessed by a number of people, usually more than one. In those states that have a standard living will form, I would encourage you to use that form, and follow the instructions on that form.
Why are advanced healthcare directives important before hospitalization?
Advanced healthcare directives are important to safeguard and ensure that your wishes and your preferences of care are respected, particularly in circumstances where you cannot express them for yourself. That means, most often, in end of life oriented decisions. All healthcare facilities - hospitals, nursing homes - are required to provide you with forms and educate you about healthcare directives, and document that we've actually done that, so that if there is no advanced healthcare directive in your file, there's a notation that the topic was discussed with you and you've elected not to make those decisions or confront the issue at that time. It's really designed to eliminate any uncertainty, any ambiguity, and to guide your family and next of kin on how you wish certain things to occur for yourself.
