|
|
 |
| Physician Law Review |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
| Advance Directives |
| 1. |
Definitions |
|
- Advanced Directive: The directions that a person gives about the kind of healthcare they wish to have or not have if they ever lose the ability to make decisions for themselves. There are two kinds of advance directives: living wills and healthcare powers of attorney.
- Comfort care: Generally, any medical or nursing intervention (including artificially administered nutrition or hydration) used to diminish the pain or discomfort of the patient and not simply to postpone death.
- Life sustaining treatment (also referred to as life-prolonging or death-delaying treatment): Any medical or surgical intervention, that, when applied to a patient who is in a terminal condition or permanently unconscious state, would serve principally to prolong the process of dying. This type of treatment is generally construed not to include any kind of "comfort care."
- Living Will: More than 40 states provide their citizens with the power to give direction to physicians, in advanced, regarding their care. These advance directives or "living wills" often provide a general admonition to discontinue life-sustaining treatment under certain conditions. Also, they are generally effective only when a patient is terminally ill.
- Permanently Unconscious State: The state in which patients are determined (usually by a primary treating physician and a consulting specialist) to be irreversibly unaware of themselves and their environment and there is a total loss of cerebral cortical function, resulting in a lack of capacity to suffer pain and suffering.
- The Power of Attorney: Ordinary Power of Attorney is the authorization of one person, the agent, to do something for another person, the principal. Under a standard power of attorney at common law, the agent lacks the power to act for the principal once the principal becomes incapacitated. Therefore, under a standard power for attorney, an agent, by definition, may not make decisions for an incapacitated patient.
- The Durable Power of Attorney: Because of the common law problem with the "Power of Attorney", state legislatures have enacted durable power of attorney laws that give an agent the power to make decisions for a principal at any time, or once the principal becomes incapacitated. While such documents generally provide for the agent to make "all" decisions, few cases have been brought deciding whether such decisions include decisions regarding health care.
- The Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare: Certain states have durable powers of attorney that specifically appoint an agent to make health care decisions. Generally, these documents allow for a principal to state his or her preferences and to make whatever limitations on the agent's powers desired.
- Terminal Condition: An
irreversible and incurable condition (usually
determined by a person's personal physician and
confirmed by a consulting physician), caused by
disease, illness, or injury from which there
can't be any recovery and death is likely to
occur in a relatively short time (i.e.
imminently) if life sustaining treatment is not
administered.
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
