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Summary

What kind of medical care would you want if you were too ill or hurt to express your wishes? Advance directives are legal documents that allow you to spell out your decisions about end-of-life care ahead of time. They give you a way to tell your wishes to family, friends, and health care professionals and to avoid confusion later on.

A living will tells which treatments you want if you are dying or permanently unconscious. You can accept or refuse medical care. You might want to include instructions on:

• The use of dialysis and breathing machines
• If you want to be resuscitated if your breathing or heartbeat stops
• Tube feeding
• Organ or tissue donation

A durable power of attorney for health care is a document that names your health care proxy. Your proxy is someone you trust to make health decisions for you if you are unable to do so.

NIH: National Cancer Institute

Start Here

• Advance Care Planning: Advance Directives for Health Care (National Institute on Aging) Also in Spanish
• Advance Directives and Do Not Resuscitate Orders (American Academy of Family Physicians) Also in Spanish
• Living Wills and Advance Directives for Medical Decisions (Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) Also in Spanish

Related Issues

• Getting Your Affairs in Order Checklist: Documents to Prepare for the Future (National Institute on Aging) Also in Spanish
• Making Decisions for Someone at the End of Life (National Institute on Aging) Also in Spanish
• Making Medical Decisions for a Loved One at the End of Life (American College of Physicians) - PDF

Specifics

• Advance Directives (National Cancer Institute) Also in Spanish
• Advance Directives (American Cancer Society) Also in Spanish
• Choosing A Health Care Proxy (National Institute on Aging)
• Psychiatric Advance Directives: Getting Started (National Resource Center on Psychiatric Advance Directives)

Clinical Trials

• ClinicalTrials.gov: Advance Directives (National Institutes of Health)
• ClinicalTrials.gov: Living Wills (National Institutes of Health)

Journal Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine)

• Article: Preferences for life-sustaining treatments in advance decisions: a cross-sectional survey of...
• Article: One-year survival after critical care as a decision basis for advance...
• Article: An International Comparison of Psychiatric Advance Directive Policy: Across eleven jurisdictions...
• Advance Directives -- see more articles

Find an Expert

• National Alliance for Care at Home
• State by State Info (Psychiatric Advance Directives) (National Resource Center on Psychiatric Advance Directives)

Older Adults

• Eldercare at Home: Advanced Directives (AGS Health in Aging Foundation)

Patient Handouts

• Advance care directives (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
• Deciding about treatments that prolong life (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
• Health care agents (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish