By a living will I am referring to instructions written out by a person to give direction to others about health care decisions in the event the person becomes unable to speak for themselves.

Writing in a way that will clearly be interpreted by others, as you intend your instructions to be interpreted, can be a problem.  Consider the following exert from a living will.

If I become incapable of expressing my wishes and my physicians declare me to have a condition from which I will not recover, then I wish to have all life prolonging procedures withheld, including, but not limited to, artificial nutrition and hydration, and life support including intubation and ventilation.

Recently I was asked to comment on health care surrogate forms and power of attorney for health.  For these I use the term living wills.  They are directives that a person records that are intended to be used in the event that they become unable to communicate their wishes with respect to medical decision making.  Sometimes the directives are given for a particular person.  Where I live, we use the term Power of Attorney For Person Care (POA).  This is a person who has the legal responsibility to make decisions for someone who is not able to give their own directions with respect to care.  … Read the rest

Recently, a reader of this blog ask me some questions about substitute decision making.  There are some important things to consider with this aspect of medical care.  So I am starting a new thread that  I am calling “Living Wills.”  The topic of substutute or surrogate decision making is related to living wills.  As with most of my blog posts, I will tackle the topic in small chunks.

More than once I have had patients tell me that they never want me to put them in a nursing home. … Read the rest