Medical Legal Directives

As a patient advocate, the nurse should engage in multidisciplinary support to help family understand the legal aspects and obligation of the power of attorney in making life end decisions and the legal obligations of the Advance Directives. Nurse must be firm in stressing these considerations to family so they may realize the full legal and ethical implications of their decisions.

What is your understanding on Patient Self-determination Act? Explain. What is the advance directive process used in your organization?

PAS relies a lot on the patient’s respect for themselves, which identifies the rights of capable patient’s to decide how and when their death should occur when they are suffering

When we think about issues that are surrounded by a lot of debate in bioethics we think about topics such as Abortion, Stem Cell Research, Genetic Enhancement, Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide. Each of these debates comes with its own ethical issues and discussion about the permissibility or impermissibility of each topic. Every one of these topics is complex and deserves careful consideration when trying to determine what is right ethically and which principles in ethics need to be considered more than others. The topic of interest in this paper is Physician-Assisted Suicide and the principles that inform our discussion of PAS and how to make sense of the arguments surrounding PAS. Individuals who are found to be competent and

Physician-assisted suicide (PAS), refers to self-administration of medication prescribed to a patient by their physician to end his or her life, and euthanasia, the administering of lethal drugs by a physician to end a patient’s life (Lachman, 2015) are extremely controversial topics. For several decades, supporters for the legalization of PAS and euthanasia have served as advocates for terminally ill patients who wish to have an alternative to a long, drawn out, painful death. These supporters have argued that death with dignity should be an option for these patients based on the ethical principles of autonomy and self- determination. With PAS being legal in several European countries as well as several US states, this provocative

Autonomy explores the idea of every person having rights in regards to healthcare and decision making. “Autonomy is an agreement to respect another’s right to self-determine a course of action and support independent decision making” (Beauchamp & Childress, 2009). In 1990, the ideas of autonomy lead to the Patient Self Determination Act which allows competent people to make their wishes known about end of life. The act includes living wills and health care power of attorneys, which deals with end of

The healthcare system places emphasis on involving patients in their plan care throughout the disease or healing process. Nurses and other members of the healthcare team are responsible to ensure that the competent patient has the right to refuse any medical treatment. Patients can have an active voice in their treatment throughout their disease process by clearly stating their treatment requests in an advanced directive. Patients who file advanced directives are warranting their current wishes are met in the event that they are no longer able to make decisions for themselves. However, an advanced directive (AD)

Healthcare providers rely on advanced directives as a means to communicate to patients once they determine that they have lost their decision making ability. As a result, the advanced care directives are expected to preserve the patient’s autonomy. They do this by allowing a patient’s values and wishes to guide treatment even when they have lost their decision making capability. At the time, it allows the patient to express their preferences to the health care providers with regards to treatment, without verbalizing it. In the end, the patient’s freedom to choose a certain course of treatment in still preserved even though the patient is

It is very important to educate the hospital staff properly how to manage and use an advance directive. This is an effective tool to eliminate conflicts regarding treatment decisions. It also protects both staff and patients to avoid from any misunderstanding or misinterpreting of their desires on how to proceed with their

The Patient Self-Determination Act is derived from the understanding that people should be given knowledge that will make them to give wishes for the extent of medical treatment they wish to receive if they incase become incapacitated. The Power of Attorney for Health Care is taken from the later to meet the wishes of the incapacitated in the state. The document power of attorney is legalized and therefore allows you to choose someone who can make decision for you in case your health condition has worsened and you are unable to decide anything by yourself concerning your health.

Advance Directives are extremely important because they allow others to express their wishes before they are too ill or incapable of doing so themselves, promoting one’s autonomy to make health care treatment choices. Advance Directives allow for individuals to have a plan set in case an unfortunate event happens. They intend to eliminate pain and suffering from family members by letting others know they followed the person’s wishes. Why is it that many people do not take the initiative to complete one? Some may argue that they are unaware of what an Advance Directive is. Others may claim that completing an Advance Directive is a waste of time because health care professionals may ignore it when it is necessary to consider it. Another perspective

In the ideal world, all long term care setting populations/residents have drawn their advance healthcare directives. Subsequently, when the time comes and he or she is unable to make decision for him/her, the resident has identified an agent to make decision for him/her.

The second one is the advanced directives, it is a legal document based on the principle of autonomy that expresses the desire about life support of the patient in relation to different medical treatment; when the patient is unable to make those decisions due to unconscious or incapable of expressing them.

Living will: It is one of the medical directives which contain information about a specific patient. It informs the kind of treatments a patient should get in a specified situation of the terminal diagnosis and what are not needed for him or her. The living will provide this information even when the patient is unable to communicate with nurses or providers (FamilyCare America, n.d.).

This is great as it could prevent family feuds, and the weight of possibly thinking you may have made the wrong decision. I feel the article is lacking the information on where a person can find the laws in their state. It is also lacking information on where to go to set up an advance directive. I feel that some people might find that information helpful and useful.