Avoiding Legal Trouble

Use Advance Directives To Get The Right Medical Care

If you are going into the hospital to have surgery, one of the things that you will be asked is if you have a living will, advance directives, or a do not resuscitate order in place. These orders are things which you can use to dictate your medical wishes when you aren't able to state what you want. If you want to get these things, you should meet with a lawyer who deals with estate law. They can draw up your wishes and have them notarized. Then you can file the papers with your doctors as well as at the hospital. That way everything can be in place if something goes wrong. 

What Are the Directives?

Advance directives are actually a whole group of things. They include things like a living will, medical power of attorney, and do not resuscitate order. 

Living Will: A living will sets out all your medical desires, including your end-of-life choices. While you draw it up with your lawyer, you need to have a doctor who can state that you are in sound mind when you make your choices. Having the doctor certify that will actually protect you. It will be hard for anyone to break your living will if it can be shown that you were in your right mind. In your living will, you can state exactly what you want to happen in any outcome. For example, you may want to only get palliative care if your situation is terminal. 

Do Not Resuscitate Order: A DNR states that if something happens during the procedure or the during your hospital stay, they are not to use any extraordinary measures to try to bring you back. That means no CPR, supplemental oxygen, or defibrillators. You can also state that you would only want care to make you more comfortable if there is no chance that you will recover. 

Medical Power of Attorney: A medical power of attorney lets you give someone the legal right to make decisions for your medical care. If you don't have other directives in place, your next of kin is usually the person who makes those decisions. However, if you don't want them to make that decision, then you can give someone else medical power of attorney so they are the only one who can make medical decisions for you. 

Making sure that your medical care happens the way that you want it to is important. Visiting an estate lawyer, such as Begley Carlin & Mandio LLP, and getting advance directives written up will help make sure that happens.


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