ADVANCE DIRECTIVES

Advance Directives

Advance Directives

Introduction

All those documents that communicate about a persons wish about his or her health care, when he or she becomes in capable of making the health care decisions, such decisions are called as the advance directives. There are two types of advance directives

A living will. It is that will which in advance, communicates about a person's wish or guidelines about his or her health care.

The second type of advance directive is appointing an attorney which can also be called as an agent or proxy, is responsible for taking the decisions for the patient as the patient is in capable of doing so.

Main Body

It is normally found that the people communicate their wish to their general doctor, or to the doctor who is treating them in the case of a disease. Sometimes it even happens that the person is uncertain of the situation and he therefore is not able to communicate about his decisions, and then comes the role of a decision maker, which is the advance directive play. In a condition of lack of decision from the person, a third person may be called in to make the health care decision that the person may not want. Many states in the United States today allow the surrogate decision makers, which are the next of kin for the patients. When the state is less in to action, the traditional procedure is to approach the next of kin for the person. Cases being transferred to the court are very rare in the case of advance directives, as it is a legal and traditional procedure to approach the next of kin for the person. There are no ethical boundaries to the advance directive in the eyes of few. A few people consider this to be an ethical act and a few consider it to be unethical. Majority of the people say that it is a personal wish of a person to under go any treatment he or she wants to, they can not be forced. A few people say that by introduction of such a system, the government has snatched away the right of people to live.

An advance directive has to be drafted and signed under a strict law suit, if any of the laws related to the advance directive is not fulfilled, and then the condition of advance directive would be considered a vague and become in effective. The advance directive has to be signed by the person under the presence of witnesses and under the vigilance of a doctor, if an of these conditions is violated, then the advance directive shall become in effective. The law clearly recognizes the state and condition of an advance directive, but the law conditions have to be systematically met so that it can be applied.

Living Will

A living will expresses a person's preferences for medical care, the reason why this type of advance directive is called a living will because it becomes effective when the person is ...