Including Detailed Information For Medical, Legal, Business and Public Sector Professionals
The following sections provide more in-depth information about advance directives and the Health Care Decisions Act (HCDA), which authorizes advance directives and also sets out how health care decisions can be made for you if you do not have an advance directive: DETAILED OVERVIEW
This section describes why you should have an advance directive; the different provisions that you can put in an advance directive, including provisions about mental health care; the requirements for an advance directive to be valid; and how an advance directive is activated and de-activated. Go HERE.
AGENT
This section discusses the standards with which your agent must comply, and the limits on the agent’s liability. Go HERE.
POWERS OF THE AGENT
This section reviews the powers of the agent that are set out in the advance directive forms cited in this website. It discusses your right to include or exclude those powers; the importance of certain key powers, including powers relating to mental health care and hospital placement, the power to consent to treatment over your future protest (the “Ulysses Clause”), and the power to remain as your agent over your future protest. Go HERE.
INSTRUCTIONS
This section reviews your authority to set out specific instructions on what care you authorize and what care you refuse in the event you become incapable of making informed decisions about your care, and the limits of that authority. There is also discussion of how this instructions section can be used as a “psychiatric advance directive” (PAD). Go HERE.
END OF LIFE
This section reviews the meaning of key terms (“terminal condition”, “life-prolonging procedure”) involved in making decisions about end-of-life care (often referred to as a “Living Will”), and describes some key differences in the way that different advance directive forms handle this subject. Go HERE.
BODY AND ORGAN DONATION
This section reviews the different ways that different available advance directive forms deal with the issue of body and organ donations, and the granting of authority to an agent to make such donations. It also provides references to other mechanisms for making body and organ donations. Go HERE.
REVOKING AN ADVANCE DIRECTIVE
This section describes how and when an advance directive can be revoked. Go HERE.
PROTESTING CARE
This section describes what happens when you protest your care, or when you protest the continuing authority of your agent, after you have become incapable of making informed decisions about your care. Go HERE.
ORAL ADVANCE DIRECTIVES
This section discusses the limited circumstances in which oral advance directives can be used (namely, only in end-of-life situations) and what is required for them to be valid. Go HERE.