Do you need a Living Will Form or a Health Care Power of Attorney
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The purpose of a Living Will declaration is to document your wish
that life-sustaining treatment, including artificially or
technologically supplied nutrition and hydration, be withheld or
withdrawn if you are unable to make informed medical decisions and
are in a terminal condition or in a permanently unconscious state.
1. Life-sustaining treatment means any health care, including
artificially or technologically supplied nutrition and hydration,
that will serve mainly to prolong the process of dying.
2. Terminal condition or terminal illness means an irreversible,
incurable and untreatable condition caused by disease, illness or
injury. Your physician and one other physician will have examined
you and believe that you cannot recover and that death is likely to
occur within a relatively short time if you do not receive life-
sustaining treatment.
3. Permanently unconscious state means an irreversible condition in
which you are permanently unaware of yourself and your surroundings.
Your physician and one other physician must examine you and agree
that the total loss of higher brain function has left you unable to
feel pain or suffering.
Having a Living Will does not affect the responsibility of health
care personnel to provide comfort care to you. Comfort care means
any measure taken to diminish pain or discomfort, but not to
postpone death.
In most states, a Living Will is applicable only to individuals in a
terminal condition or a permanently unconscious state. If you wish
to direct medical treatment in other circumstances, you should
prepare a Health Care Power of Attorney.
The Health Care Power of Attorney form gives the person you
designate (agent or attorney-in-fact) the authority to make most
health care (including dental, nursing, psychological, and surgical)
decisions for you if you lose the capacity to make informed health
care decisions for yourself. This authority is effective only when
your attending physician determines that you have lost the capacity
to make informed health care decisions for yourself. As long as you
have the capacity to make informed health care decisions for
yourself, you retain the right to make all medical and other health
care decisions. You may also limit the health care decisions that
your agent will have the authority to make. The authority of the
agent to make health care decisions for you generally will include
the authority to give informed consent, to refuse to give informed
consent, or to withdraw informed consent to any care, treatment,
service, or procedure to maintain, diagnose, or treat a physical or
mental condition.
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