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What are advance directives? Advance directives are legal documents that provide instructions for medical care and only go into effect if you cannot communicate your own wishes. The two most common advance directives for health care are the living will and the durable power of attorney for health care.

No one can change your advance directive without your permission. If you want to change it, you can do that, but no one else can do it without your knowledge. Your appointed healthcare agent can make medical decisions for you.

They enable physicians and surrogates to make good-faith efforts to respect the patient's goals and implement the patient's preferences when the patient does not have decision-making capacity. An advance directive never takes precedence over the contemporaneous wishes of a patient who has decision-making capacity.

Many times, advance directives are too vague to guide clinical decisions. For example, general statements rejecting "heroic treatments" are vague and do not indicate whether you want a particular treatment for a specific situation (such as antibiotics for pneumonia after a severe stroke).

Advance directives are legal documents that provide instructions for medical care and only go into effect if you cannot communicate your own wishes. The two most common advance directives for health care are the living will and the durable power of attorney for health care.

Living will. A living will is a written, legal document that spells out medical treatments you would and would not want to be used to keep you alive, as well as your preferences for other medical decisions, such as pain management or organ donation. In determining your wishes, think about your values.

Advance directives consist of (1) a living will and (2) a medical (healthcare) power of attorney. A living will describes your wishes regarding medical care. With a medical power of attorney you can appoint a person to make healthcare decisions for you in case you are unable to speak for yourself.

Advance directives generally fall into three categories: living will, power of attorney and health care proxy.

In some states, advance health care planning includes a document called physician orders for life-sustaining treatment (POLST). The document may also be called provider orders for life-sustaining treatment ( POLST ) or medical orders for life-sustaining treatment (MOLST).

Write down their wishes, preferences and instructions for future health care, end of life, living arrangements and personal matters and/or. appoint one or more Substitute Decision-Makers to make these decisions on their behalf when they are unable to do so themselves.