"Advance medical directive" is the name given to personal planning tools such as living will documents and health care powers of attorney.

An advance medical directive contains decisions made by you and made now, not by someone else and in the future, as to medical care and medical treatment you want for health conditions that might occur in the future ? decisions you make and make while you can, not decisions others make when you cannot.

In documents such as these, you describe exactly which medical treatments you do not, and which you do, desire in the event you become unable to make your wishes known at some point in the future. The decisions you make are never irreversible, because advance medical directives can be cancelled, or changed, at any time and any number of times, provided a person has not become mentally incompetent.

Benefits. Some of the benefits of using an advance medical directive include being able to outline ahead of time treatments you may, or may not, want to allow, such as:

	Intravenous therapy		Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
	Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)		Feeding tube
	Respirator		Other life-sustaining procedures

It also allows you to empower someone chosen by you, not a court, to make medical decisions for you when you no longer can.

Living Wills. Since 1997, Louisiana Law has recognized that a person has the fundamental right to control the decisions relating to his own medical care, including the decision to have life sustaining procedures withheld when he has been diagnosed as having a terminal and irreversible condition. In a living will, the most common advance medical directive, a person can refuse all death-delaying procedures, or can request all such procedures.

It is important to note that even with a living will, life-sustaining procedures will not be withheld unless and until the patient is diagnosed and confirmed as having a terminal and irreversible condition by two physicians who have examined the patient, one of whom must be the patient's treating physician.

Durable Health Care Powers of Attorney. The health care power of attorney (called by some “health care proxy”) tells your physicians that you have designated someone else to express your health care wishes or make health care decisions for you. This will best be, of course, a person who knows of your wishes and something of your values and preferences and someone in whom you have faith and confidence.

Under Louisiana law, a power of attorney for health care must be express, and thus written. In other words, a power of attorney you may have given someone to engage in banking or other financial transactions does not give that person the power to make health care decisions for you. The Louisiana Civil Code states that “[a]uthority must be given expressly to … [m]ake health care decisions … .”

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People of all ages, young persons as well as the elderly, should consider these personal planning tools. Advance medical directives can be very useful and, because they can be canceled or change, a person should not be at all uncomfortable with them.