One type of advance directive; a competent person’s instructions for medical care, indicating the kind of care that will be consented to or refused.
A document devised as a means by which terminally ill people can set limits on the effort to keep them alive beyond the point they would themselves choose.
A document in which the signer requests to be allowed to die rather than to be kept alive by artificial means in the event of becoming terminally ill.
A document signed by a person while in good health to specify the decisions he or she wishes to be taken about medical treatment if he or she becomes incapable of making or communicating them.
Written advance directive whereby a mentally competent patient directs his or her physician in the provision of future medical care if he or she becomes terminally ill and incapable of making decisions; in most states, living wills are legally enforceable.
A document that a person completes while still mentally competent, which directs his or her physician to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment that would prolong life without the chance for meaningful recovery. A living will, a type of advance directive, normally becomes effective when a person is no longer capable of expressing his or her wishes and has become incapacitated or irreversibly unconscious or is in a persistent vegetative state.
A cancerous tumor of the kidneys that occurs mainly in children. The tumor may develop in fetal tissue, but most often occurs at about age 3. The cancer is curable in most cases. It is associated with some congenital defects such as urinary tract abnormalities and enlargement of one side of the body. Although it generally remains localized, the tumor can become large and spread to other tissues.
A document in which a person, while still mentally competent, directs his or her physician to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment that would prolong life without the chance for meaningful recovery. A living will, a type of advance directive, normally becomes effective when a person is no longer capable of expressing his or her wishes and has become incapacitated or irreversibly unconscious or is in a persistent vegetative state
One type of advance directive signed by a person for the purpose of establishing a set of instructions to health care professionals that specifies what medical care the person wants in the event he or she is unable to communicate his or her wishes about an end-of-life decision. It is called a living will because the person makes his or her own choices while still alive. In a durable power of attorney for health care, another form of advance directive, the person authorizes someone else to make medical decisions if and when he or she is unable to make them.
Also known as an advance directive or advance statement about medical treatment. This is a means of exercising choice in advance for patients who suspect that they will suffer mental impairment and become unable to speak for themselves. Advance statements can have legal force if made by an informed and competent adult, clearly refusing some or all future medical treatment once that individual has irrevocably lost mental capacity. Some statements intend to give other instructions, such as requesting certain treatments: these can be helpful in clarifying the patient’s wishes, but only a clear refusal of treatment is legally binding in most of the UK. (In Scotland, patients have some legal powers to use an advance statement to nominate another person to act as a proxy decision-maker.)
An advance directive, prepared when an individual is alive, competent, and able to make decisions, regarding that person’s specific instructions about end-of-life care. Living wills allow people to specify whether they would want to be intubated, ventilated, treated with pressor drugs, shocked with electricity (to stop life-threatening heart rhythms), and fed or hydrated intravenously (if unable to take food or drink). Some also specify the person or persons who have power of attorney to make health care decisions on the patient’s behalf, if the patient is no longer competent to make choices for himself or herself.
A written statement, endorsed by a mentally competent adult, detailing the preferred scope of life-extending medical interventions in circumstances where the individual is unable to communicate. Although a living will doesn’t carry legal weight in the UK, healthcare professionals aim to honor the wishes of patients.