What is an Advance Directive?
An advance directive is a legal document that helps ensure that your health care wishes will be respected if you become unable to speak or otherwise communicate. In the absence of a written document, sometimes an advance directive may be an oral communication, where you express your wishes for care verbally to your family members or health care agent. An advance directive may become important if you are severely injured or develop a serious illness that prevents you from actively participating in decisions about your medical care.
An advance directive is a legal document used in health care. It can be either a living will or a power of attorney and is used in case you are too ill to make decisions regarding your medical care. If you are too ill or unable to communicate your medical decisions, then the advance directive will legally transfer the authority for your medical decision-making to a person you have previously designated to do so. If you become well enough to make you own decisions, then the advance directive will end and you will once again make your own choices. There is no need for a lawyer in order to complete an advance directive, but you can choose to have one if you wish. Anyone over the age of 18 can make an advance directive. This may seem unnecessary at such a young age, but people can become sick at any time in their life and it is important to set out your wishes should that happen. In the advance directive, you will indicate a person to make your medical decisions for you. A power of attorne
Advance Directives can be thought of as ‘directions in advance’. You are: • choosing the person that will make personal medical decisions for you if you are unable to make decisions for yourself • providing that person some direction of your wishes In the past, the Living Will was used as a document for this purpose. With the medical technology and choices available today, a different document should be used so your legal choices about future care are protected. The Power of Attorney for Health Care (POA-HC) assures you that your voice is heard under any circumstances, even if you cannot communicate with your doctors because of an illness or accident. The POA-HC can also include whether you want to be an organ donor. The POA-HC does not involve financial decisions of any kind. There is no simple way to outline all the things that might happen in a person’s life or to predict what decisions might have to be made in a crisis. You should discuss strongly held values and beliefs with the a
An advanced directive allows a person to make their health care choices know in advance of an incapacitating illness. It is a legal document in which you state how you want to be treated in the event you become very ill and there is no reasonable hope for your recovery. Although laws vary from state to state in American, there are basically two kinds of directives: 1. A Living Will is a legal document in which you state the kind of health care you want or dont want under certain circumstances. 2. A Health Care Proxy (Or Durable Health Care Power of Attorney) is a legal document in which you name someone close to you to make decisions about your health care in the event you become incapacitated.
